Season of Rest
by VJ Riddle
Summary: Anur's family hadn't seen him in years. When they got word he was dragging a friend 'not a Herald' home with him, they were surprised, then delighted. When Kir accepted his Herald's invitation, he had only been hoping to be distracted from the death shadowing him at the 62nd. Both agreed Anur should have given more information than 'not a Herald'. Friends Across Borders, Part 6.
1. Chapter 1

"Think he'll actually come back?" Captain Ulrich asked his second co-conspirator, Greich shrugging as they watched the priest leave from the sergeant's office window, just after the dawn service.

"We have a report ready, if he doesn't," Greich replied practically, "But I wouldn't be so quick to assume he'd leave. He's as much invested as this fight as we are."

"You could see as well as I that guilt's been tearing at him since that new recruit was eaten by Furies," Ulrich replied with a shake of his head. "That's what the men think he goes to do, judging by rumors. To hunt and kill every Fury herd he can as atonement."

"Well thankfully for our Firestarter's life-expectancy, he has friends across the border as well, who are in a better position to drag him from that guilt than we, or at least distract him from it," Greich said, unhestitatingly keeping the deception regarding the truth of the conscript's death. "Though I would not be surprised if he does start doing that."

Ulrich just shook his head and left, heading for his own offices. Greich sighed, and gave stern mental orders to a Herald he'd never met to take care of their chaplain. The look in the man's eyes when he'd pulled Greich aside in the midnight watch – it had been a look he'd seen before, in men who had subsequently thrown themselves into the fight and died for lack of caution and care. Duty alone could only chain someone to the world for so long.

***===***pagebreak***===***

"You're coming!" Anur grinned, recognizing the fuller saddlebags intended for a longer journey, and the fact his friend didn't wear his Sunpriest field robes for once.

"It wasn't an invitation I could bring myself to refuse," Kir replied, a small smile on his face. "The unit will do well enough in my absence, so long as I do in fact return a few days before Midwinter. Hello Herald Griffon."

The red-haired Herald smiled in response, gladly continuing the Valdemaran conversation, "Hello Father Kir. Hope you don't mind my tagging along. I'm going in a vaguely similar direction so thought we might as well travel together."

"He also wants to pick your brain," Anur stage-whispered, Kir shaking his head as the one horse and two Companions turned towards the road.

"I can't imagine I have much more information to give you," Kir told the duo, "The essential gist was in the explanation I gave in person, those monographs were true detail-oriented pieces, and the rest is all trial and error."

"See, that's where I'm running into trouble," Griffon replied, "I can't afford much 'error' – when I go wrong, I go wrong in a fantastically bright and destructive manner, especially with your methods, since I put way too much power into them. Harevis is getting better at power-level judgements, but I keep overloading it."

"How do you lot train your witch-powers?" Kir asked.

"Gifts," both Heralds corrected automatically, exchanging looks and laughing at the echo.

"Gifts then," Kir corrected, making a mental note to not fall back on his distinctively Karsite term for their abilities.

"We take classes in it, along with our other studies at the Collegia," Anur explained, "Usually we start in the third year or so, sooner if it's really powerful. Griff, didn't you start your second year?"

"Just some basics so I didn't keep flaring fireplaces when I walked by," Griffon shrugged, "For the most part I was held back with my yearmates, so third year. We group them by type – so there's the farsight group, then the mindspeech and similar Gift group, and the fetching group. Firestarting is in the fetching group, but it's pretty rare – last time a powerful gifted had it, they were taught completely separately. The reason I was grouped with the fetchers was mostly because the best instructor for me was also teaching the fetchers – he wasn't alarmed when I accidently made a fire too bright or too hot."

"What about theory?" Kir asked, brow furrowed. Griffon seemed to be missing an inherent _point_ about the sorting methods, which were definitely (hopefully) not just by virtue of the fact the instructor was the only one who wasn't terrified of his abilities.

"What about theory?" Anur tilted his head curiously, "We mostly just practice it. Sure there are stories and warnings, so we know not to overuse it, or not to try moving living things with fetching because it takes too much, but no essays or anything. Some historical things I suppose. With the mindspeaking group we spent most of our time on ethics after we got shielding down. Fetching we practiced a lot so we'd get used to it, expanding our range, precision, things like that."

Kir stared blankly at them, remembering the hours per day over the course of _years_ he spent reading up on historical Firestarters, attending burnings of all sorts of offerings, heading off to find his own fires to investigate and examine – Sunlord! No wonder Griffon was so amazed by the volume of knowledge he had, if _that_ was his standard. Whatever scraps he can get from his predecessor (apparently ancient, from the implications) and he could figure out on his own in spare moments?

"What about you? Something different I imagine, with those monographs!" Griffon asked, the pair apparently realizing that Kir was shocked.

"I studied to be a Firestarter for _years_," Kir replied, still in a state of shock, "Hours were devoted on a daily basis to the study of creating, controlling and the simple nature of flame. There are no real records of the particular method I use, but I had time to study it. I was _encouraged_ to study it. Anything I wanted to set alight, so long as I came up with a decent reason and it wasn't too expensive, it was mine to burn. When I was studying with the others – as apprentices – we had hours long discussions on technical details and theories."

"Well. That's different," Anur said after a few moments of mutually shocked silence.

"I suppose you had broader topics to study, since your duties are broader. We're primarily focused on Writ and Word during the early years and then as apprentices we're trained in the more specific duties of our stations," Kir allowed.

"I wouldn't be so sure," Griffon frowned, "I think the topics are comparable, with different perspectives, of course, but priests have to act as judges and civil authorities as well as religious, right? And history, of course, some politics I guess – mathematics and writing, healing basics."

"Little to no military studies," Kir refuted, before frowning as well, "Not much as far as foreign languages go. But you're right, there is a fair amount of overlap."

"I think the main difference is length," Anur said finally, "We only study for four or five years, on average. How long were you at the – what is it called, academy?"

"Academy, I suppose would work. We're initiates, at that stage, and after a few years you become an acolyte," Kir shrugged, "Acolytes, then apprentices, then priests. I was an acolyte until – oh, I was twelve, I think, when we started as apprentices. Seventeen when I received my assignment, I was ordained a few months before that – five years as an apprentice. So…ten years? That does vary, depending on age of arrival, but ten would probably be a good average."

"Wait – you started when you were _seven_?" Anur stared, aghast, "_Seven_?"

"You attend the feast of the children starting at five and until thirteen," Kir shrugged, "It's not particularly young."

"Ten years?!" Griffon was stuck on the main point, "What could you possibly spend ten years teaching people!"

"How to efficiently light fires, apparently," Kir replied dryly.

"Valid," Anur grinned, Griffon chuckling.

"Back to the sorting, are you certain it's just because this instructor wasn't scared of your abilities?" Kir asked, dragging the conversation back to his initial track.

The distracted looks on their faces meant the Companions had something to say. That must be how a lot of their knowledge from the older times was restored, Kir mused, these Companions could serve as a collective knowledge base, and could at the least contact others who were more ardent students of history.

"Harevis says no, it was an old tradition," Griffon said slowly, "It's just been so long since a powerful firestarting Gift was in the Heralds that the fact Dirk wasn't going to freak out if I messed up was highlighted."

"Wait a minute – you mean they're – hey!" Anur straightened, comprehension gleaming in his eyes, "That's what you mean! What you do, your Firestarting method – it's Fetching _really tiny_ things to make friction, to make flame! So Fetching and Firestarting are basically the same, except for scale!"

Kir grinned and nodded, Anur whooping gleefully, "So does that mean _I_ could learn to Firestart, or Griffon could learn to Fetch?"

"No," Kir shook his head, "The size difference is so great – what is the smallest thing you can Fetch?"

"I… have no idea," Anur frowned, "We started with pillows and scrolls."

"Hmm. Which is more difficult, pillow, or scroll?"

"Err… depending on what we're doing. Like that letter I sent you? Pillow would be a lot more difficult, but for line of sight? Probably the scroll?" Anur shrugged at Kir's raised eyebrow, "I honestly don't know for sure. There's not much occasion to throw pillows."

"Well, you can probably see it," Kir continued, Anur nodding in agreement, "What we 'fetch'," he waved his hand between himself and Griffon, "Is _miniscule_. It _cannot be seen_. Everything, _everything_, has that 'hum' to it that I described. Some are… 'louder' than others. But you certainly can't _see_ it. The flames are just a visible result to an invisible act."

"How did you get to that 'hum'?" Griffon demanded, "Because I can hear it _sometimes_ but it's really hit or miss, and it just isn't _obvious_. Did you just always hear it or is there something I can do to cultivate it?"

He had been so happy they'd avoided this topic the last time the technical exchange came up. Blast.

"Heartbeats," he said finally, the two Heralds staring at him in joint confusion. "Voices – they're all, they're all _vibrations_, they _hum_. When you – you listen. And eventually it just… expands."

"Listen to heartbeats," Griffon mused, before saying brightly, "I can do that!"

Well that was one way to deliberately misunderstand what he'd been implying. Kir decided to let it go, if they didn't want to push the issue, he certainly didn't want to discuss it. Not with Gero's un-burned fate lurking in the back of his mind.

"Huh. What _is_ the smallest thing I can fetch?" Anur mused after a few paces of silent riding. "Now I'm curious."

"And can you use it on already moving objects?" Kir asked, "Because swatting arrows out of the air before they hit you would be very useful."

The two Heralds just stared at him, before grinning, "That's brilliant!" Anur laughed, "But we'll be starting with tossed pillows."

"There goes my dastardly plan," Griffon joked, "But really, that would be fantastic! And maybe you could throw things at enemies! Or tug them off horses! Or – "

Kir just listened as the two of them started raving about possible applications. There were a few he doubted were even remotely possible, but the fact they had finally gotten to _thinking_ about them was good. Asking questions about what their witch-powe- what their _Gifts_, could do was the first step to really understanding them beyond their basic use.

And half the things he could do, his old Firestarting Master had considered impossible, so they might as well try it. Their witch-horses could keep them from doing something completely stupid.


	2. Chapter 2

That evening found them settling into a Waystation relatively close to the Sensholding region, Anur twitching in annoyance by now, as Griffon had taken to throwing pinecones at him and it had taken a few marks of that behavior for him to get the knack of swatting pinecones out of the air. Even now, he missed about half of them. Kir was just waiting for him to snap and tackle Griffon into a snowdrift or icy stream, figuring it was only a matter of time before he got annoyed enough to try it.

"Griff! Cut it out!" he heard him growl, the Heralds tending to their Companions while he brought their gear inside and pulled in firewood out of the storage area.

Shaking his head, he started poking through the food they'd brought and what was available in the Waystation, the Heralds assuring him that there would be no problems with using the supplies laid in against a longer stay, especially since they were only here for one night. Feeling a sudden, out of place flare jerked him out of his amused witnessing and he immediately snagged it and crushed it out, the alarmed yelps telling him it hadn't been something intentional.

Sticking his head into the stable, he raised an eyebrow at the two, alarmed to find Anur trembling, ducked behind Aelius and Griffon staring in shock, attention split between his brother Herald and a large scorch mark on the floor, still smoking. "Griffon, switch with me," Kir ordered, muttering as he walked past, "I assume you lit a pinecone or something similar on fire?"

"A grooming brush," Griffon muttered back, clearly torn between delight at lighting a moving object on fire and worry for Anur's extreme reaction.

"Herald?" Kir asked, walking over to Anur, concerned to find him with his face buried in Aeilus' mane, still shaking slightly.

"I really don't like fires Kir," Anur muttered, "Not when I don't know they're coming."

"You haven't had a problem with me lighting fires, and I don't use enough power to be detected, like Griffon still does," Kir pointed out, leaning against the loose-box wall casually.

"Yeah, that's the problem," Anur looked over at him with a weak grin, "I know you know what you're doing. Griff's had a few too many accidents for me to feel like he really has control of his flames. With you around, I know the flames won't do anything you don't want them to. With Griff – it'd be an accident, sure, but it'd still hurt."

"Ah. Well, we can just ask that he not practice unless I am around to make sure nothing gets out of hand while he is with us," Kir shrugged, glad that there was at least a simple solution to work around the worry. It was a valid concern as well, and an idea he probably would have proposed without Anur's prompting after this accidental fire.

"That'd do it," Anur agreed, clearly relieved that Kir wasn't going to make a bigger deal out of the admission. Kir didn't see a point, unexpected fire was a perfectly understandable thing to be afraid of, and if anything it was flattering that Anur found his presence a comfort rather than a concern.

"Your witch-horses settled?" Kir asked, and both Companions bobbed their heads in response, Anur chuckling at some unheard comment and giving Aelius one last pat before following Kir back into the main room of the waystation, Kir still feeling the witch-horse's eyes on him.

Griffon had tossed together a basic stew to cook, settling the pot over the flames before he straightened and said, "I'm sorry Anur, I didn't think – well. That about sums it up. I didn't think."

"No harm done Griff," Anur grinned, clapping Griffon on the shoulder, "Just – no sudden practicing unless Kir's around?"

"Probably a good idea anyway, if I'm setting grooming brushes on fire on accident!" Griffon laughed, "I haven't done something like that in years, getting this new technique down is going to take some work. Good thing I'll have all winter to practice and plenty of snow as a safeguard."

"It's a good season for it," Kir agreed, "You are heading up to Haven, correct?"

"Near Haven," Griffon shrugged, "For a bit anyway, then probably Haven proper to plan the next spring's campaigns and where I'll be stationed."

"Any ideas where they'll want you this time?" Anur asked, sitting down on one of the beds tucked against a wall. Griffon sighed and sprawled on the straw-stuffed mattress against the other wall and said tiredly, "Who knows? I'm just hoping I'll have a more permanent station instead of constantly running up and down the border, but that's a bit of a slim hope."

"Are you still mostly set against mage-constructs?" Kir asked, pulling out the long fancy-knotwork rope he'd been working on while riding and sitting next to Anur, moving back so he was leaning against the wall. "None are sent against Karse, that I've heard. They might be sent down further towards the fatlands, but I doubt it."

"Yeah," Griffon replied, "We get at least one construct across the border each incursion, often at a different place so I'm sent with a few to deal with the construct while the bulk of the force is sent to deal with Ancar's actual armed forces. It seems to be a leeching game. We just don't have the resources ready to fight for a sustained war, we don't have a standing army all the time, not one big enough for this scale of conflict. Not yet anyway, now that we've started drafting it'll be another year before the new recruits are ready to get thrown south, so there's a bit of a stretch of resources going on."

Kir frowned, Anur waiting a few moments to see if he'd say anything before he said, "How long do you think Ancar's going to be able to sustain his war? He's losing a lot of people each time too after all."

"But he's blood-enslaving farmers and throwing them into battle with near equal success to trained fighters," Kir said grimly, "He's a blood-mage, it doesn't matter to him if the crops rot in the fields and his people starve, so long as there is food on _his_ table and bodies in _his_ armies, it does not matter. So until the entire population of Hardorn is dead, he will not stop."

"That's crazy!" Griffon objected, "There's no way, he'd have to stop before then, just so his armies didn't starve, he has to have at least some sensibility."

Kir didn't need the disbelieving look on Griffon's face to know he wouldn't get anywhere with that argument. As many of his proofs relied on historical knowledge and stories of old witches pursued by Firestarters (and subsequently burned), it wasn't a matter he was particularly anxious to press right now.

"You could always approach Guilded mercenaries," Kir offered instead, Anur chuckling ruefully at his statement and admitting, "It seems we already have. You got word last week, right Griff?"

"Right, Talia and Dirk went down to Rethwallen to ask for aid from them, and apparently this mercenary captain who's a friend of the princes there was at court, and turns out Eldan recommended her anyway, so two birds with one stone! Talia seemed pretty positive about the woman; they're actually probably coming through the Comb about now, now that I think of it."

"A Comb crossing in winter?" Kir asked, shocked, "They must really want this contract."

"And they've fought mage!" Griffon continued, "So hopefully they'll really help bridge the gap."

Kir bit down on his somewhat disparaging _'_of _course_ they've fought mages' because Valdemar's utter lack thereof was still startling to him, and something he honestly forgot about most of the time, until someone said something like _that_. It was like they didn't even think about the fact that _everyone_ had mages, except them. That seemed a serious oversight, defensively, but somehow it hadn't come back to bite them.

It just didn't make any _sense_.

"So, I'll practice listening to that hum. I've been able to warm metal in hand, nearly burnt myself, but I did it, so I'll try that again," Griffon said, returning to the topic of Gifts, "And Anur, you'll _have_ to practice that pinecone swatting, because swatting arrows out of the air would be _really_ useful."

"I think as long as I have line-of-sight it'll be fine," Anur replied, "That's where I'm best at anyway, for fetching in general. I just need to get faster at it – as it is it takes a few moments to call something to me from even across a room, to get to the point I can knock an arrow aside before it actually gets close enough to me I'll just need to work on speed."

"And that can be done without someone throwing pinecones at you," Kir was quick to point out, wanting to avoid any random flares as well as tackles into snowdrifts, because he didn't doubt that once the pair started shoving each other into the snow, he'd soon follow.

"Aww, but it was so entertaining!" Griffon groaned, grin belying his tone and Anur grumbling half-hearted curses.

They sat in comfortable silence for a while, Griffon starting to doze and Anur calling a spoon to his hand repeatedly, Kir finishing the final loop of the cord, and with it, Anur's gift, before the stew was ready to eat. The meal passed with few words from any of them, and it was only after they'd washed everything up and returned to their former positions that Kir had an idea on how to pass the evening (in a way that would avoid any mention of Fires and potential victims thereof).

"Herald, _you_ owe me this demonsbane story," Kir nudged Anur pointedly, and he laughed, Griffon perking up and dragging a roughly carved set of shepherd's pipes out of his bag with a grin.

"Right, so, song first, then the story!" Anur decided, Griffon immediately launching into a melody and Anur singing along easily enough. Neither were anything more than amateurs, but as Kir sat back and listened, comparing the tale mentally to the horror stories he'd been raised on, he couldn't imagine a better way to hear it. Hearing a tale of Heraldic deeds seemed so much more appropriate, from Heralds in one of their waystations.

***===***pagebreak***===***

Kir woke up the next morning with one of Anur's elbows resting against his ear. He shook his head slightly in amusement; the Herald contorting himself in Hardorn he had attributed to the uncomfortable frozen ground, but apparently it was just how he slept.

He knew it was before dawn, he had been in the habit too long, but he was also against the wall and didn't particularly want to try crawling across the Herald to get up. He could conduct dawn prayers lying down.

Taking his knotwork Sun-in-Glory down from the shelf above him, he rested his fingers on the first prayer-knot and started murmuring, not finding the same comfort in the prayers he usually did. It was hard to believe that the Sunlord would find joy in the prayers of one who had violated the sacrosanct space with innocent blood, but it was not a habit he would give up. He couldn't. If he doubted now, if he stopped _now_, then all the blood-scorched ash on his hands had been for _nothing_, and Solaris might as well have _never_ come to Ascend.

"Kir?" Anur muttered, shifting into something more closely resembling a comfortable posture, "You all right?"

Hands folded around his prayer beads over his stomach, abbreviated dawn prayers finished with, Kir just stared up at the ceiling, torn between admitting his doubts and ignoring it. In the end, it was the feeling of the witch-horse's heavy gaze again that decided him by the simple expedient of giving him something to talk about instead.

"Will you tell your witch-horse to stop staring at me already?" Kir replied, the guilt pushed back for another day.

"…He's not? Err. He is? But he wasn't? Wait, how could he be staring at you, he's through the wall!" Anur said, pauses between his sentences indicating a mental conversation going on at the same time.

"Because I can feel _someone_ staring at me, and it certainly isn't one of you two," Kir said sarcastically, "And this happens _every time_ I am with you."

"Aelius seriously has no idea – hey Griff!" Anur called, picking up a boot and throwing it at the other Herald, who woke up cursing and demanding, "What?"

"Is Harevis staring at Kir?"

"…_what?"_

"Is Harevis staring at Kir? He can feel someone staring at him, and it's not Aelius."

"Why couldn't you just have Aelius ask him?" Griffon groaned, continuing, "No, he's _not_ staring at Kir. What the hell Anur, go away!" He flopped back down on his mattress, pillow soon covering his face.

Anur looked over at Kir and shrugged, "Don't know what to tell you, none of us are staring at you. Or were, I guess I sort of am now."

Kir was just watching him in disbelief, before chuckling and shaking his head, "Unbelievable," he murmured, growing serious and continuing, "Well _someone_ is. I _know_ what it feels like to be stared at incessantly."

Anur got a distracted look on his face and Kir waited for the new conversation to finish patiently. Hopefully the witch-horse would have some idea as to what this was, because now it was honestly getting _annoying_, and it was worse to not know what was staring at him, especially since he knew he had this sensation whenever he was around Anur for an extended period.

"He says he has an idea as to how to fix it," Anur said, sounding extremely dubious which didn't exactly fill Kir with confidence. "Err… so tell me if this works?"

Kir watched with some incredulity as Anur closed his eyes and appeared to be concentrating on something, only growing more incredulous when the feeling _actually went away_. "It's gone," he said in surprise, Anur opening his eyes and looking equally stunned, "What did you do?"

"Umm… I imagined a whisp of fog with blue eyes and told it to leave you alone, you were safe."

"A whisp of – wait, you communicated with a _vrondi?_ I thought you lot weren't mages!"

"We're not! Valdemar doesn't have mages!"

"But you just communicated with an air elemental!"

"A what? It's just a pair of eyes in fog! We use it for the truth spell!"

"Will you shut up? It's not even dawn yet!" Griffon interrupted, sounding aggrieved. Anur just rolled his eyes, twisted over to grab one of Kir's boots this time, and chucked it at him again. Griffon grumbled curses and rolled over, clamping the pillow over his head again.

"The truth spell?" Kir asked, propped up on one side and lowering his voice at least, Anur turning back to face him before answering, also in a slightly lowered volume, "Yeah, the truth spell. It's something Heralds can do. It was developed around the time of Herald-Mage Vanyel Ashkevron, and it's basically the only real magic we have left."

"_Real_ magi – never mind. How does this spell work? Is it some Herald secret?"

"No, but Aelius says non-Heralds can't do it," Anur frowned, "Even if they're mages?"

"That seems… odd. But, fine. How does it work then?"

"Well, there are two stages. The first one, you concentrate on the image of a piece of fog with blue eyes – apparently a _vrondi_? – and imagine it settling it around the target's head and shoulders, saying this rhyme nine times," Anur ran through it in a chant, Kir recognizing the usual pattern for incantation memorization, "And then there's a blue glow around the person, and when they tell a lie the glow vanishes, so you can see if they're telling the truth."

"What if they don't know the truth? Or they genuinely think they're telling the truth?" Kir asked immediately, and Anur winced, admitting, "That's the weakness of it. It can only identify the truth _as they know it_. Aelius says they have a reaction to the emotional side-effects of a lie, that's what makes them leave, and the glow vanish."

"Huh. What's the second stage then?"

"Well, not everyone can do that. I can do it without repeating the rhyme, just an extra bit of focus on them only telling the truth. I know Griff has to run through the rhyme twice. There's no glow on that one, but they're forced to tell the truth. Again though, as they know it."

"…why would a _vrondi_ be staring at me whenever I'm around you?"

"That… is a very good question. I didn't even know they were actually real things, so I honestly have no idea."

"Because you two would _clearly_ make such a _fantastic_ couple, always _talking_ about deep and important topics while other people are _trying to sleep_!" Griffon inserted sarcastically, Anur rolling his eyes and Kir saying flatly, "Very funny, Griffon. You realize peope are burned for those accusations in Karse?"

"Wait what?" Griffon pulled the pillow off his head and looked over at him, now wide awake, "Seriously? I thought it was just witches."

Kir couldn't believe he'd actually brought this up of his own volition, but plowed forward anyway, nodding, "Any form of deviant behavior can condemn someone. Depending on the priest or commanding officer… it has happened."

Both Heralds exchanged glances and Kir snorted, "I haven't. It's not something as condemning as witch powers and is more dependent on the authority figure in question. I never cared, and since everyone _knows_ it can be condemned, those who are so inclined are discreet."

"Huh. Well. I'm not _shaych_, but good to know."

"You're not _what?_"

"_Shaych_, it's the word for 'those so inclined'," Anur quoted with a shrug, "No idea where it came from."

"It certainly doesn't sound Valdemaran," Kir mused, before shrugging, "Very well. I don't particularly care, but good to know I suppose. Now back to these _vrondi_, if Griffon can contain himself, why would one be staring at me?"

"Aelius says it still is, and that it just isn't letting you feel it," Anur frowned, "Apparently they're easily entertained?"

"Are you saying one was letting me sense it staring at me whenever I came by Heralds because it was _bored_?" Kir asked incredulously.

"I guess?" Anur shrugged helplessly, "Honestly I'm as surprised as you."

"I'll research it while I'm in Haven," Griffon volunteered with a yawn, "If you two let me get just a bit more sleep."

The pair of them exchanged eye rolls, before mutely agreeing to his conditions and finding something relatively quiet to do. Meaning Kir pulled out some knotwork, and Anur called a boot to his hands repeatedly.


	3. Chapter 3

A couple marks after dawn (Griffon placated by the small amount of extra sleep he had gotten), the three of them rode out, Waystation again secured until the next Herald in need came along. Kir had put aside the odd _vrondi_ encounter as something to think about later, depending on the results of Griffon's research in Haven's records.

He wasn't too hopeful, both considering Griffon's apparent dislike for digging through chronicles and the obscure nature of the _vrondi_ even amongst mages. They were unsophisticated air elementals, not useful for much of anything and capable of remembering only basic instructions. He only knew of them because his master had been rather fond of using air elementals to urge his flames, so he had researched the beings extensively before he found his own methods to be far more effective in both flame generation and energy expenditure.

They spent the morning's ride in silence, eating trail rations for lunch in the saddle and a mark past midday reaching the crossroads where Griffon would be splitting from them. "Safe travels Griffon," Anur said, the pair of them clasping arms briefly. "And have a good Midwinter!"

"You two as well," Griffon replied, shaking Kir's hand before Harevis wheeled around to head directly north at a brisk pace.

"Only practice near plenty of snow!" Kir called after him, Griffon laughing and waving over his shoulder in response, soon out of sight around a bend.

The two of them continued on for a few leagues in comfortable silence again, before Kir finally broke it, asking, "We're to arrive tomorrow?"

"Might make it late today actually, we made good time yesterday," Anur replied, eyeing Riva thoughtfully, "Riva's not in need of a break is he?"

Kir sighed and patted his horse's neck, Riva tossing his head lightly but not shifting pace. "His endurance has increased greatly these past moons," he said wryly, "When it took me two and a half days to reach our meeting point, it now takes two straight even through poor conditions. In spring and fairer weather, I'm sure it will be cut down again."

"That… seems reasonable?" Anur replied, statement altering to a question at Kir's expression, but the priest just shook his head, apparently not considering the matter worth elaboration.

"So, describe this family I am going to meet. And what exactly did you tell them about me? And gifts – I raided my stash of pagemarkers and such, but might not have enough."

"Nine for gifts. Some more distant relatives may stop by for a meal or an evening, but not for multiple days. My parents, two sisters, one brother, spouses, and two nephews and a neice."

"All three are married?"

"No, one sister, my brother. The boys are my brother's, the girl is my sister's – Lilah had best have not gotten married while I was away, though my last letter seems to hint that she's being seriously courted," Anur shook his head, "So, we might be drawn into complicated threat schemes. It's a bit of a tradition for my father and brother to give the potential spouse a true fear."

Kir chuckled, "I think that is a tradition no matter the gender or family, you protect your own. Certainly, I can help with threats. You'll have to tell me what is appropriate. Now what exactly do they know of me?"

"That you're not a Herald."

Kir paused, clearly waiting for more, before he asked incredulously, "That's it? You tell them you're bringing a friend with you and all you bother to mention is that I'm _not a Herald_?"

"Well it was important they didn't feel they needed to modify another stall so it was appropriate for a Companion," Anur shrugged, smiling sheepishly, "I think I mentioned somewhere you were in the guard, if not they'll assume we met through the Guard or the war, or both. I didn't want to build up some complicated story without you. I don't really want to build up a complicated story at all. I know I mentioned you saved my life in some mission gone wrong."

Kir hesitated, unsure it was appropriate for his nationality and occupation to be kept from his friend's family, but not seeing how revealing either, much less both, would lead to a very enjoyable holiday for anyone.

But he had been continuously surprised by Anur's own tolerance, and the tolerance he'd encountered with all the Valdemarans he'd met so far, and Anur had to have learned it from someone. "Do you think," he finally asked, "that my being a sunpriest would be a large problem?"

Anur thought on it a while, saying slowly, "I know your being Karsite won't be a problem. There're a surprising amount of people who cross over each year, and not just because of Fires. Knowing that you've saved my life before, and that we're friends and that Aelius likes you, will probably be enough to keep them from any irrational dislike by profession. Though I don't think the Firestarting Order would be necessary."

"Certainly not," Kir agreed, understanding very well that his usual abhorrence for being obscure about his duties wasn't something that he should really cling to here. "I can simply be a chaplain with a gift, if that comes up. It probably will."

"And if they guess what a Firestarting Gift might do in Karse, well," Anur shrugged helplessly, "As long as we don't explicitly say anything, it shouldn't be too bad?"

"Worse come, I can just go sleep in that Waystation again, they're rather nice," Kir sighed, "Very well. You get to tell them."

"Oh no, _you_ tell them, I get ready to jump in with hand-waving explanations. But I have to be there, because the look on Jer's face is going to be _great_."

"You're the one who didn't tell them already, _you_ get to do it!" Kir insisted, laughing, and they let the matter drop, figuring it would be said one way or the other before the visit was over.

He started digging through his saddlebags instead and Anur watched curiously, "What are you looking for?"

"Oh, just wanted to count to make sure I had gifts for all nine. I have some spare cord I could probably whip something together with if I need to, but any more than one and I should probably see if we can stop and find some in a town we pass through. I have some semi-precious stones to pay with. What did you grab, if you don't mind my asking?"

"What did I – oh. Oh _shit_."

"Herald?"

"I forgot the gifts."

"You _what_?"

"I forgot gifts! Agh! They're going to _kill_ me," Anur moaned, burying his face in his hands, reins dropped across a now whickering Aelius' neck.

"How long has it been since you last saw them?" Kir asked.

"Before the war with Ancar, so about… three years?"

"Then I think your presence and survival will be gift enough," he said practically, resecuring his bags, apparently satisfied with the number of gifts he had brought.

"Well… maybe for my parents and siblings, but my nieces and nephews? They'll never forgive me," Anur sighed, before shrugging, "Nothing for it. I'll come up with something, maybe ask the others when we get there and see if they have something that I could group things with."

"Hmm. Boys, how old? We have plenty of extra knives," Kir suggested and Anur frowned thoughtfully, nodding, "Might work. Depends on what Jer and Ayla say of course. And Mara's pretty young still, so she should be easy enough to please…"

"Witch-horse," Kir said, directly to Aelius, "Can I have some tail-hairs? Easy enough to make a quick bracelet out of horse-hair, and a flourished one so it is too flowery for the boys to wish for one of their own."

_:It's a good idea Chosen, I agree,: _Aelius said, Anur nodding and reaching back to grab some shedded strands Aelius managed to produce quickly, passing off the thin hank to Kir who looped his reins loosely around the horn and set to work with practiced ease.

"Thank you Kir," Anur sighed, running a hand through his hair with a rueful laugh, "I invite you to come for a visit and end up getting you to do the work! I remembered yours at least."

"Oh now _that_ is bad, Herald," Kir chuckled, "Remember something for me and not for your own family? Maybe your parents and siblings _won't_ be content with just your presence and survival."

"They need never know," Anur informed him sternly, before adding, "Unless I come up with something for them that I can get my hands on _before_ the gifts are exchanged. Then we will pretend this whole embarrassing incident _never happened_."

"Tell yourself that often enough, and you may start to believe it. I, for one, will never let you forget this. How old is this Mara? Young, you said?"

"Last time I was home was for her birth, that was… bit over two years before the war? Wow. It has been a long time since I was home. She'd be four then, at least. Wow. _Four_! Talking and walking and everything already! Excellent. I hate babies."

Kir stared, and Anur looked over at him before smiling sheepishly. "Well not _hate_ exactly, I mean, babies are fine and all. But _dealing_ with them. So… tiny. And loud. And you can't _reason_ with them. Or even bribe them all the time! And then people say things like 'oh she has her mother's nose' or 'they're so cute! Look at those darling little toes!' and I'm left standing there thinking, am I the _only_ one who thinks they look like shriveled up, slimy potatoes!"

Kir's mouth was twitching now, Aelius whickering as Anur got further into his rant, reins dropped as his hands waved through the air, "And when you're a Herald, people are always _handing_ you _babies_ as if _I_ know what to do, or as if I automatically _love_ the screaming little things because I have a giant white talking horse! Get them to two, three, then, yes, they can be adorable. Or annoying. Asher? He was great. Kids, I'm fine. But _babies_."

He frowned indignantly when Kir burst into laughter, both at his rant and at the final disgusted expression he pulled at the idea of being handed a baby.

"I have to say," Kir said, subsiding into chuckles, "I at least never have that problem."

"Kind of jealous," Anur grinned, before shrugging and admitting, "But not really. It's a sign of trust, that they do that, and it's touching. I _like_ being trusted so widely, but it's just a sign I would prefer they skip."

"It's more likely for them to hide the children from me, or at least try to hustle them away quickly," Kir shrugged, before chuckling suddenly, "There was this one town where some children were _always_ visiting relatives. Always. It was very suspicious, but they had so many relatives that they were all legitimate. We spent two years of my apprenticeship tracking them down and the others were so _frustrated_ when it really was just them visiting relatives, no witch-powers to be found."

"Two years to find a group of kids?" Anur asked incredulously.

"Well it wasn't a full-time search, it was more of an idle whenever we could spare a few days to hunt through the countryside," Kir shrugged, "And some of us were more eager than others, of course."

"Of course," Anur rolled his eyes, guessing that some form of sabotague and trickery had been involved in the apparently ridiculous delays.

"You know – could you teach me to do that?" Anur asked finally, pointing at the already repeating pattern forming in Kir's hands.

Kir looked up briefly, before smiling and nodding, "Of course, if your witch-horse will let you use some hair."

_:I'm going to be bald at this rate. Oh go ahead Chosen,:_ Aelius said, Anur grinning and twisting to get his own hank of hair and looking over at Kir for instructions.

"First, fold it in half, simple overhand knot to hold the loop, that gives you a catch for the bracelet – "

Dusk was starting to fall when Anur finally got through his bracelet, a simpler pattern than the one Kir had finished marks earlier and tucked away to wrap up with the rest of the gifts when they got there. "Ha!" he cried victoriously, before frowning at it, Kir's mouth twitching as he commented, "Very… unique."

"Oh shut up," Anur snorted, tossing it at him and Kir caught it, laughing, "It's my first one."

"And a good one, for a first," Kir admitted, passing it back,"Though I think you'd best practice with regular string, or thicker cord. Horse-hair isn't the easiest thing to start with."

"Point," Anur nodded, before pointing at a worn marker next to a path leading off the main road, "Lisle is a bit further down this road, but we're going to cut through this way, brings us straight in without having to double back."

"Sounds good," Kir agreed, Aelius taking the lead down the narrower trail, hooves still somehow chiming in the damp, half-snow earth.

It wasn't even a quarter-mark later that their arrival was heralded by a gleeful screech, "_Uncle Anur's here!_"

The house that had only just come into view suddenly boiled over with people, the source of the alert a bright green blur on the snow as the child sprinted over to them as fast as their small legs would allow. Anur jumped down from his saddle and caught the running girl, swinging her up over his head in a practiced move, the squeal of glee approaching truly piercing levels.

"Is this _Mara_?!" he cried with affected shock, "You've gotten so big! How old are you, you must be nearly six!"

"I'm four!" she said, beaming from where she was perched on his hip, obviously proud of being mistaken for being older than her real age.

"Four! I can't believe it! Kir, can you imagine? Last time I saw you, you were as big as my arm, maybe!"

Kir just chuckled, swinging down from Riva and offering a hand to Mara, who shook it with an attempt at an imperious look on her face. "Mara, this is my friend, Kir Dinesh. Kir, this is my adorable niece, Mara! And the rest of the clan!" Anur indicated the approaching group with a sweeping gesture, a grin on his face as he waved, two women breaking ahead of the pack and slamming into him with hugs, Anur squawking as he nearly fell.

"We'll let the sisters figure out if he's missing any limbs," an amused voice said, Kir looking over to find an older man, in his thirties he would guess, with Anur's smile.

"You're his brother then? Jer, right?" Kir asked, shaking the man's hand firmly and receiving a nod in return.

"Right, older than this brat by eight years. Also his elder is our sister, Jana, and here we also have the youngest, Lilah. Jana's the one with the blue shawl, Lilah has the elaborate braids. Ma and Pa are waiting on the porch, and the leisurely stroller is Kay, Jana's husband. My wife Ayla is in Lisle with our boys, picking up some bread and things. Should be back soon."

"Kir, right?" the blonde with elaborate braids, Lilah, came over and ignored Kir's hand, instead pulling him into a hug, "Thanks for putting up with this idiot. He can be annoying."

"Oy!" Anur protested, Kir returning the hug gingerly, Jana apparently realizing he wasn't particularly accustomed to it and shaking his hand instead when it came her turn to greet him.

"Come on, Anur, Ma and Pa are waiting!" Lilah insisted, grabbing her elder brother's hand and tugging him after her, Mara still on his hip. Kir grabbed Riva's reins and followed, Aelius and Jer walking next to him and Kay joining the group as they passed.

"Did he really mention nothing beyond the fact I'm not a Herald?" Kir asked.

Jer laughed, replying, "That's just Anur, he prefers to give the bare minimum so everyone can meet without bias. Or at least that's his excuse, I'm fairly certain he just doesn't want to write it all down. Don't know if you've noticed, but he prefers talking."

"Never would have guessed," Kir said dryly, reaching the porch where Anur was being lectured for poor letter writing skills by a petite blonde woman who must be his mother.

"And this must be Kir!" she said, rounding on him and Anur making an exaggerated expression of relief behind her back. "Anur has told us very little about you, but truly a pleasure to meet someone who can make sure he doesn't gloss over anything in his stories. I'm Anna, his mother."

"Shit," Anur muttered, Mara gleefully informing everyone that her uncle had said a bad word, and he winced at Jana's raised eyebrow, while Kir just shook his head, accepting a hug from Anna with more grace than Lilah's, having something of a forewarning.

"This is Connor, my husband," she introduced, Kir shaking the man's hand briskly. Anur had clearly inherited most of his features from him, if a bit finer boned than the stocky man. "And I'm hoping some introductions have been made?"

Everyone nodded at her question, Anur handing Mara off to Jana and saying, "We'll be inside in a bit, we just need to settle these two."

The group went into the house, Anur leading the way to the small stables, "So, overwhelmed yet?" he asked with a grin.

"It'll be an interesting visit," Kir acknowledged, smiling slightly, "So, what sort of stories is your mother going to want?"

"Ugh. She's mostly after me for glossing over injuries, but I just don't want her to worry about something that's happened, and most of them near a year ago!"

"So if the saving your life thing comes up?"

"Can we just say, caught, almost burned, you saved me? Skim the four days?" Anur asked hopefully, and Kir nodded agreeably, privately deciding that if it _did_ come out Anur had been tortured (and he was certain it would at one point or another) he would claim ignorance that they hadn't been told and insist he'd simply wanted to keep the children from being traumatized.

"This is a very nice stable," Kir changed the subject, untacking Riva and putting the saddle in the small tack-room, set up for two horses' gear. Saddlebags got tossed on the floor after he pulled out his brushes and pick, quickly setting to work.

"It is, we used to have cows and a cart-horse, still have the cart-horse but no cows, not with the bees bringing in enough money. When I was Chosen there's a stipend given to parents who lose working hands until we're of age, they didn't need the money since I wasn't here to feed or clothe, so they saved it and rebuilt this thing, with a loose-box for Aelius," Anur explained, the two of them done grooming at the same time, giving the hungry pair food and water for the night before gathering their saddlebags and heading back outside.

They got to the door just as a cart came into view, pulled by a stocky pony with a lantern hanging over it. The driver and two smaller figures waved, the two of them returning the gestures before ducking inside to the slush-room, stomping snow off their boots and hanging coats before finally going inside.

"Ayla's pulling up now!" Anur announced on entering, Mara squirming out of he mother's hold and darting over to him again, getting picked up immediately.

"I'll go help her with the horse and send the boys in. Mara, you come with," Jana said, securing her shawl and walking past them, collecting her now pouting daughter with a smile. The rest of the family had settled around the table in mismatched but well-made chairs, Anna smiling and saying, "Anur, your old room has been set up for you both, will that be all right?"

"It'll be fine ma, we've bunked together," Anur assured her, leading the way up the narrow stairs to the second floor, a room in the back corner of the house their destination. It was a little cramped, but had a large enough bed they wouldn't be on top of one another which was really all they needed. It wasn't like they'd be spending the whole holiday in here.

"Now you need to brace yourself," Anur grinned, "Because the twins are something else."

"Looking forward to it," Kir said, surprised that he actually was. It was a completely novel experience, walking into someone's home and being welcomed, and one he found he enjoyed.

"Uncle Anur! Uncle Anur!" two new voices chorused, blurred figures slamming into Anur's legs and sending him falling back up the stairs, Kir catching him and helping him back upright with a soft laugh, Anna and presumably Ayla both scolding, "Boys!"

"But we haven't seen Uncle Anur in _forever_," the one clinging to his left leg pouted. Anur struggling to walk forward with the duo attached to his legs. Kay and Kir both snorted at his expression, Ayla sighing and coming up to pull one of her sons off, sending them both to wash up under their grandmother's direction so she had a chance to say hello.

"Good to see you Anur," she finally got a chance to say, smiling and returning his hug. Turning to Kir, she held out a hand and said, "You as well. Kir Dinesh, right?"

"Yes," he nodded, shaking her hand with a smile. She returned it and continued, "Those two hellions were Marko and Joseph, they'll be that energetic for the entire holiday season, hope you weren't planning on a peaceful holiday."

Anur and Kir both shrugged at that, clearly having different definitions of peaceful. "Come on, sit down! Now that you all are here we can eat," Anna said, Anur and he dragged into the kitchen to help carry dishes out to the main table. It was a simple array of dishes, but plenty of it. He was put in a seat between Anur and Ayla, Mara quite gleefully claiming the seat on Anur's other side, the twins both pouting about it but apparently used to letting the redheaded girl get her way most of the time.

The meal passed relatively quietly, though it was clear that was simply familial custom as the boys at least looked like they were bursting with questions. The moment Anna indicated they'd start clearing the table, they fairly dragged Anur away to sit in front of the fireplace and started demanding stories and tales about his adventures. Kir was quite content to let him answer those, instead helping with cleaning.

"Oh go on ma, you know you want to hear his stories as badly as the kids do," Jana insisted, shoving Anna out of the kitchen gently and dragging Kay in to replace her at the sink, Ayla joining them. There wasn't room for anyone besides the four of them to really move around, so the rest went drifting in to hear the stories for themselves.

"I'll be listening to those stories for the rest of the year as the boys re-enact them," Ayla told Kir, passing him a dish to dry, "I won't be missing much."

"Mara still plays Herald and Companion with her friends so I'm sure I'll get some of them too," Jana chuckled, "Besides, I'm more interested in the tales he'd _better_ not be telling my girl."

They both looked over at Kir meaningfully, who just stared back blankly before Kay chuckled and said, "That's a hint to tell them something. How'd you two meet? The Guard?"

"We were lurking in the stables of an inn during cold weather together," Kir replied finally, "Shared drinks, stories, commiserated over being stuck out in the cold and we stayed in touch."

"No drama?" Jana sighed, "I'm disappointed."

Kir felt completely out of his element and apparently it showed on his face, because both women laughed before Ayla offered, "So what all has he told you about us?"

"I didn't even know how many of you there were until we were on our way here," he admitted and all three rolled their eyes, "Typical," Jana snorted, "Well then, we'd best let you know the basics."

Their idea of the basics was a lot more information than he thought he'd ever need, so by the time they finished cleaning up, he'd gotten a summary of their family's history back three generations, frankly amusing stories from the siblings' childhood, a few wistful wedding tales, and brief reports on their livelihoods. Jer apparently was the miller in Lisle, Kay worked as a blacksmith a village over, and both women went between weaving and serving as midwives depending on demand.

Any chance for them to start asking him questions was lost when they entered the main room, Kir finding the twins bouncing around him with stars in their eyes as they babbled, "You're a Firestarter like Herald Griffon Monster-Slayer, really? Really? Can you show us? Please! Please!"

Kir was watching them incredulously, Anur laughing at his expression and shrugging at Kir's look. "Told them about Griffon practicing your methods and setting his eyebrows on fire. It's a good story!"

Kir snorted and shook his head, moving to sit on the ground by the hearth next to Anur, the boys scrambling after him and sitting down right in front of him, staring intently with matching jade eyes. It was rather unnerving, particularly as Mara twisted around from her spot on Anur's lap to join the staring contest. Sighing, he reached back with a practiced twist and took a bit of the fire crackling beside him, making sure to use small gestures to indicate what the flame was going to be doing. It was less unnerving (and oddly, more dramatic) that way.

A lick of flame twisted out towards them, the children all gasping as it coiled through the air, splitting off from the fire to hover over his palm. He smiled slightly at their awestruck expressions and decided he might as well enjoy their own enjoyment and indulge in some pointless but flashy control exercises he hadn't used since he was an acolyte.

Taking his other hand, he pretended to pinch a piece of the fire he held, twisting the orb back into one strand, making a loop. Anur's expression was priceless as he started doing a basic cat's cradle sequence as if he were just using string. It was a very complicated exercise, moving his fingers and the flame at the same time without actually coming into contact with the fire. His tolerance for heat was higher than most, but if the flame was in extended contact with his skin he'd still be burned.

Finishing off, he compressed the cord back down into a ball with a completely unnecessary swirl of his hands before sending it back to the hearth, hand going through a gentle tossing motion to preserve the illusion.

He looked back at the boys, who were still staring at him with dropped jaws, a quick glance at the adults revealing at least mildly shocked expressions on their faces too. Anur, as he could have guessed, recovered first and clapped an arm around his shoulders and crowed, "That was awesome! Why have I never seen you do that before?!"

"It's rather useless," Kir replied dryly, "Just control exercises, and I know I can do them, so why practice? Besides, the last thing we need is for you to pester Herald Griffon into trying them before he's ready so he ends up lighting a bit more than his eyebrows on fire."

"But it's so cool!" Joseph squawked, hands starting to wave in the air, "I wanna be a Firestarter mom!"

There was a sentence Kir didn't think had _ever_ been spoken in Karse. Not for centuries at least.

"Sorry sweetie, it's something you either are or you aren't," Ayla replied, "Not a job you pick."

"A good exercise is trying to get a candle to light," Kir inserted, "What I did took many years to get, so don't try grabbing fire to practice."

Jana shot him a grateful look, Ayla echoing it while the boys gave promises that they wouldn't try and mold flames with their bare hands. Though he did grin at their caveats – just in case they did end up being firestarters, they wanted to make sure they'd get to do it eventually, just not before they had practice.

"Wish we had Gifts," Mara pouted, "I want to talk to Aelius!"

"Yeah," Marko said, "How _do_ you get Gifts Uncle Anur? The Bards never say who gives them away!"

"Well Chaplain?" Anur muttered to him, Kir shaking his head slightly and deciding a distraction was in order, "No one really knows," he said, "But would you like to help your uncle get better at Fetching while we're here?"

"Really? You need _our_ help?" Joseph asked, his twin brother and he staring at Anur in clear shock, turning rather quickly to glee, "Yes! How can we help!"

Anur was getting a dismayed look on his face and he looked over at Kir, saying, "Oh no you're – "

"See," Kir spoke over him with a smirk, "Anur's having some trouble catching moving objects, like, say, snowballs. And pinecones."

"Oh I hate you."

"So it would be a great help if when we have some free time, you three throw snowballs and pinecones at Anur so he can practice stopping them from hitting him," Kir finished explaining.

"And don't forget," Anur quickly added, "Kir needs the practice too!"

"So all we need to do, is throw snowballs and pinecones at you guys?" Marko grinned, "This is going to be awesome!"

"Ha, you're going down!" Anur muttered, Kir just smirked and raised an eyebrow. He was perfectly capable of melting snowballs before they got to him, and by Anur's narrowing eyes, he got that message clearly and was determined to get his revenge somehow.

"So what's this I hear about Lilah getting courted?" Anur asked, turning to his little sister, who immediately flushed a bright red as the children tripped over themselves to give him all the latest information on the man in question.


	4. Chapter 4

Light was creeping through the window and Kir was blearily blinking up at the ceiling. Once the children had gone to bed, Ayla and Jer deciding to stay the night for this first day, Connor had pulled out some of his specialty honey-mead and they had whiled away the hours into the wee hours of the morning, exchanging stories, news and old memories pulled out to be polished again.

Mind still sluggishly trying to acknowledge the fact he had actually slept past dawn, he was launched straight into alarm with a piercing shriek at the door, footsteps pounding down the stairs.

They both went straight from half-sleep to fully awake, long-knife bared in Anur's hand as he plunged down the stairs, crying, "Mara!", Kir hard on his heels, twisting the hearth fire he could sense into fully prepared life, cords of flame straining to reach him.

Jana was holding her hysterical daughter, who was staring at the two of them in terror and babbling something that made very little sense, but Kir noted most of her fear was directed at him and he felt a pang at that. He didn't know what had given him away as a threat, but he wished she hadn't stumbled upon it.

"He's a waker mama! I saw him he was dead!" she was wailing, pointing at Kir.

He nearly frowned at that, letting the flames die back to their former crackling safely in the hearth. Whatever it was that had terrified her, it wasn't something he could burn into non-existence. Anur apparently realized a similar thing, lowering his blade to watch his neice in worried bemusement, glancing between her and Kir while Jana tried to soothe her and figure out what she was talking about.

"I just went to go wake Uncle Anur up and he was _dead_!" Mara cried, and Anur seemed to understand, actually laughing.

That cut across the tension in the room, Mara sniffling as she stared at her uncle, appearing almost betrayed. Anur subsided to chuckles and smiled at his neice gently, "Mara dear, he wasn't dead. That's just how he sleeps. I know, it's creepy. If you'd waited a bit you'd have noticed he was still breathing."

"Promise?" Mara sniffed. In two large steps, Anur had reached Jana and taken Mara up in his arms, "Promise."

She watched Kir for a few more moments before squirming in Anur's arms to get him to set her down. Clearly bracing herself, the four-year-old walked over to Kir and looked up at him, before waving him down. Kir obediently crouched next to her, opening his mouth to ask what she wanted as proof for his being alive, when she suddenly collided with him, ear pressed against his chest and the moment she heard his heartbeat she relaxed before bursting into tears again.

Kir swept her into his arms and stood, murmuring quietly to her, nodding at Anur who relaxed at the sign everything was going to work out this time. It was slightly ridiculous, but for a young girl who had thought her uncle's friend was a cursed corpse or ghost, genuinely terrifying.

Just when he thought they had made it through their drama of the day, Anna caught sight of Anur's chest through the loose collared night-shirt he'd come tumbling down in and she asked dangerously, "And just _what_ is _that_?"

_That_ being a scar from his time in Sunbeam Brook, unfortunately enough. Oh dear. They hadn't even really gotten around to informing them of Kir's nationality the night before (by some now apparently revoked miracle). This wasn't going to be particularly pleasant.

Anna was not alone, Anur getting tugged into a seat by his elder sister and mother both, shirt tugged over his head so he was left in loose trews sitting at the kitchen table, Kir wincing at the now blatantly obvious scars, not all of them from Sunbeam Brook, but the majority. Anna sat down, blankly staring at her son, who was watching her with sheepish concern, while Jana was clutching the back of a chair, hand to her mouth.

Mara had stopped crying though, and was looking at the scene curiously, clearly not understanding why it had gone so quiet.

Kir heard voices from outside and recognizing the twin's voices and Lilah's at least, he murmured to Mara, "Why don't you go hug your mother, she looks like she could use one."

The young girl nodded, and he set her down and followed. While she ran to her mother and insisted on being hugged, her mother gladly obliging, he grabbed Anur's shirt and tossed it at the Herald's face, his friend spluttering indignantly around the fabric and giving him a grateful glare. "We'll be down shortly to give a hand," Kir informed Anna, who simply nodded, knuckles white on the table. Anur rose and hesitated, reaching over to rest a hand on his mothers' and murmuring, "Ma. Ma I'm okay."

"I know, I know," she replied, voice trembling, but she briskly shook it off and patted his hand gently, "Go get dressed and all, then come back down. We can discuss it some other time."

"Thanks Ma," Anur smiled, kissing her forehead swiftly before going back up the stairs, Kir waiting for him at the base.

"_Thank you_," he muttered fervently when they reached the top, "I had _no idea_ how to get out of that."

"Oh you're not out of that," Kir refuted, "Just a stay of execution. How is it we never managed to tell them about the Sunsguard bit last night?"

"Blast if I know. I think your name and title are so intertwined it doesn't occur to me that everyone doesn't associate Kir Dinesh with a sunpriest, so I didn't bother to explain it. Seemed obvious."

"Point," Kir acknowledged, going for the washroom while Anur changed. Anur and he switched, Kir getting dressed quickly and hesitating before putting the witch-horse Sun in Glory on over his head. He had given up most of his trappings of office for this trip, but he couldn't bring himself to set aside this one.

He went downstairs first, bracing himself against a confrontation that didn't immediately happen, as everyone had apparently crowded into the kitchen for a discussion before Anur and he came back. Hesitating before giving in, he carefully walked to just within earshot.

"Why didn't he come _home_?" Anna was asking, voice breaking on the last word.

"He couldn't have thought that – Kir? I mean, we wouldn't care!"

Now that was interesting, care about him how? Had they figured out he was a Sunpriest? Had they mentioned it at some point last night and just didn't remember it slipping into the conversation? That was entirely possible, they were too used to calling each other by their professions.

"He might just have not had time," Jer pointed out, "He was assigned to the guard years ago, he's probably pretty high on the border and Heralds are always in high demand. War's only been going on a full year."

"But surely he'd have gotten the chance somewhere in there to at least _write_! And tell us about Kir!" Lilah replied, "He gave me enough grief about Clay, and mom wrote him all the details, I'm sure. He could have reciprocated!"

"Anur is horrible at writing letters, he always has been," Jana sighed, "He might have just kept saying he would tell us in person, and never getting the chance to actually come. Time passes quickly, he might have just forgotten it's been so long since he saw us."

"It's been _four years_," Kay snorted, "Mara doesn't even know him outside stories. I'm fairly certain he didn't just forget about that."

"Kir?" Anur called from the stairwell, Kir swearing mentally and quickly going back so he was just at the base, Anur raising an eyebrow at him and Kir shrugged. It hadn't been any truly useful information, except in that they'd apparently figured out he was a Sunpriest, so at least that was one less worry.

"So, once more into the breach?" Anur muttered when he got to his level, eyeing the family slowly trickling out of the kitchen to the table, dishes in hand.

"…you first."

"Traitor."

***===***pagebreak***===***

They made it through breakfast without anyone bringing up the scars, though Kir was certain it was only because the children didn't need to hear about the sorts of things that would result in that extensive scarring. His assumption was confirmed when the three of them were taken outside with Kay and Ayla to play and visit Aelius (who had been fed, along with Riva, when the twins and Lilah went out that morning).

Kir and Anur's siblings cleared the table, Anna reaching across the table to grab Anur's hand in a white-knuckled grip, Connor sitting with an arm around her waist. No one said anything until they had all returned to their seats, Anna finally asking, "When?"

"Year and a half or thereabouts," Anur replied simply, before allowing, "For most of them. Some I just didn't get to a Healer in time during Ancar's campaigns."

Anna sobbed once, Jer's arms crossed over his chest and scowling at the implications of so many injuries in such a short timeframe, while Lilah finally looked somewhat confused. Apparently she had been distracting the children outside again while the adults conferred. Jana leaned in to murmur an explanation in her ear and she quickly looked horrified as well.

Connor seemed to be taking it calmest, turning his gaze to Kir and saying, "That's when you saved him, wasn't it? All he said was you'd saved his life and you weren't a Herald, and I'll admit, initially we hoped it was more of a joking life-saving than anything. He's claimed one of these three has saved his life when Anna's been upset with him often enough. But it wasn't that at all, was it?"

"No," Kir replied, "It was not. And I aided his escape."

"You _were_ the escape," Anur rolled his eyes, "I wouldn't have gotten out of that myself."

"Oh so you'll admit to _that _one and not the other?" Kir scoffed, pulling out their running gag in an effort to at least lessen some of the tension.

"That one does _not_ count because I would have been _fine_," Anur insisted, grabbing onto that tone shift eagerly.

"Please, you'd emptied three flasks on your own, you couldn't even stand!" Kir snorted, Anur opening his mouth to retort but interrupted by Lilah's shrill, "Stop it!"

They silenced, turning to the pale young woman whose hands were shaking, "Stop it!" she repeated, "It's not _funny_, Anur, you almost _died_! Why didn't you – why didn't you come _home_? We didn't even know you were – we didn't even know you were _hurt_!"

Kir quickly debated his options.

"Really?" he turned to the Herald with a raised eyebrow, "You didn't even write?"

"How could you _write_ something like that?" Anur demanded, sharp look conveying quite clearly that he _didn't _appreciate being thrown under the cart.

Kir was entirely unsympathetic, "Easily enough! Dear family, there was an incident a few weeks ago and I was injured rather badly, but please don't worry, I reached a Healer in time and there will be no long-term damage beyond some scarring."

"No way would that have been enough!" Anur retorted.

"It would have been better than nothing!" Kir replied, seeing the Bellamy's nod in unison at his statement out of the corner of his eye.

"See?" Jana demanded, "Kir understands. He probably writes his family at least basic updates once a moon!"

Kir was unable to prevent the slight grimace at that claim, Anur wincing sympathetically. Anna caught it and she frowned, "You don't? Whyever not, it seems you at least understand the importance of _communicating!_" she shot the last at her son, who winced again.

"I –ah. I can't," Kir finally shrugged. It must not be common knowledge the Sunpriests are completely isolated from their pasts here, understandable. It wasn't something that would be considered essential knowledge for a lay-person he was sure.

"Wh – oh. Oh, I'm sorry," Lilah said with a sad smile, before grinning, "You'll just have to write to us! Clearly Anur fails at it, so we'll just have to get updates from _you_!"

"Oh come on!" Anur cried, "I'm not _that_ bad!"

Everyone cast him a withering look at that, and he cringed, smiling sheepishly.

"So, it was Ancar?" Jer brought the conversation back around, "You speak good enough Hardornen, I suppose."

"Ah – no. It was in Karse," Anur admitted, Anna's grip becoming exponentially tighter and he winced, saying, "Ma, I can't feel my fingers."

"Live with it!" she snapped, "I can't feel my heart! How did you get him out of there?" she asked Kir, gaze desperately grateful.

"I claimed Sunhame had ordered my presence at the burning," Kir replied with a shrug, drastically simplifying the matter.

"You pretended you were a priest?" Jana asked incredulously, "How-ever did you manage that?"

The duo silenced again, and exchanged another look. Anur needed only a few seconds to note Kir was near panic, as this was one of the worst timed revelations of his career possible given the situation, and took over, reluctantly saying, "Jana… he didn't, pretend that is."

"What do you mean?" Jer asked slowly, eyeing Anur warily.

"Not exactly how I'd hoped to tell you but… Family, meet Kir Dinesh, Chaplain of the Sunsguard," Anur said, both of them bracing themselves for an explosion.

Instead, the family sat staring at them in stunned silence, before Connor said calmly, "That explains why you were so short with details on him."

Anna took one look at Kir and recognized he was very near bolting and she stood, releasing Anur's hand and walking over to sit in the empty seat next to Kir. He reluctantly met her gaze and froze in shock when she threw her arms around him, kissing his brow and saying clearly, "Thank you, Sunpriest Kir Dinesh, for saving my son and bringing him home. You are quite possibly one of the best things that's happened to him and to this family and I barely know you."

Kir thought that the last qualifier made it _less_ likely her previous claim was true, but he at least had learned his lesson about arguing with her and just took the clear acceptance of his profession and homeland with relief, returning her embrace and whispering, "You are welcome, and thank you, for understanding."

"But that's perfect!" Lilah finally said, sounding happy again, and they turned to her, Anna finally releasing him from her hug and Kir looked over at the younger woman curiously. "Like the song-cycle _Sun and Shadow_!"

Anur looked bemused as he replied, "I guess? Bit of a different situation though."

"Like _what_?" Kir asked at the same time.

Anur looked surprised, and he wasn't the only one, Jer finally laughing and saying, "Well, if that doesn't prove it, I don't know what does! All Valdemarans know the _Sun and Shadow_ cycle! I think Lilah still has it memorized, we'll have to sing it tonight! Mara will love it."

"Of _course_ I have it memorized!" Lilah rolled her eyes.

"And your first meeting!" Jana laughed as well, "Holed up in a stable avoiding freezing isn't too interesting a story, but take into account just who you two _are_ and it has _drama_! Just what I wanted!"

"More drunken story-telling than drama, after the first flask," Anur corrected, before grinning, "But there were moments."

"Moments, he says," Kir scoffed, "There were _sagas_."

Kay stuck his head in the door and raised an eyebrow, asking, "Family conference concluded? Because the boys have readied their ammunition stores for that help Anur needs."

Anur scowled at a smirking Kir, "I will have vengeance."

"But not today," Kir replied smugly, smoothing his shirt as he headed for the slush-room to get his coat and boots. He would be spending much of the day dodging snow and pinecones (and probably tackles from Anur, being honest) but at least they had gotten the worst out of the way early, and remarkably easily at that.

And the look on Anur's face when Kir nailed him with a snowball before he even shut the door was _priceless_.

***===***pagebreak***===***

The day was spent playing with the children for the most part, though there was an odd moment when Kir was pulled aside, ostensibly to answer some questions on Riva's feeding habits, only to find himself subject to a rather fierce series of threats from Jer, Jana and Lilah. He supposed that it was just them ensuring the Sunpriest friend of their brother – something of a natural enemy to a Herald after all these centuries of enmity – knew that there would be dire consequences if he suddenly changed his allegiances.

Rather foolish, really, to think that he could do that and survive long enough for them to carry out their threats. But more believable than Anna and Connor's apparently near-instant acceptance, if a little disheartening.

It wasn't until that evening, sitting around the hearth in the living room again, that he began to realize that he had been reading quite a few things wrong about the whole situation.

They were working their way through a few of the songs of the Sun and Shadow cycle, Lilah and Kay performing the duets while Jer plunked out the tune on a basic lute, Mara clearly captivated from where she was sitting on Jana's lap. Kir turned slightly towards Anur, who was slumped next to him on the smaller couch, sprawled out like he slept, and asked, "Lifebonded is a – romantic attachment then?"

"Ah – yeah? Do you not have those stories in Karse?" Anur replied lowly, eyes only flicking away form his sister and brother-in-law briefly.

"Hmm. We have stories of soul-mates, but not always romantic," Kir replied, shrugging, "Just wondering."

He watched carefully throughout the rest of the songs they'd decided to perform out of the apparently ridiculously long cycle, mentally working through the various incidents and conversations he'd seen and checking his conclusion. There wasn't anything to contradict it, and it honestly fit rather well.

Blasted Herald.

They finished the final duet, bowing to the now applauding family, and Lilah beamed over at them, asking, "Well Kir? What do you think?"

"Very nice songs," he replied, wanting to make sure that was clear, before he continued, "And remove the romance and it… somewhat fits our situation?"

"Does that make me Shadowdancer?" Anur mused aloud, "I hate dancing."

"Why would you remove the romance?" Lilah asked, clearly startled, and Kir could tell that the others were too (well, not the children).

Anur seemed to realize there was something odd going on, and he straightened slightly, blinking as he looked between Kir and Lilah before his lips started twitching. "Oh no – no _way_, really? Kir are you serious?"

Kir sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose, "I had _wondered_ why you three had threatened me if I hurt Anur. It seemed a little odd."

Anur burst into laughter, wheezing helplessly as he struggled to breathe around his hysterical snickers. "No – way" he gasped, "You thought – we were – _together_? Like _romantically?_"

Lilah had turned a brilliant red but stood with her hands on her hips and glared at her laughing brother, "Well what are we supposed to think?" she snapped, "You show up after _years_ of not a single _word_ besides what other Heralds on patrol can say about you being alive, dragging some random 'not-a-Herald' friend home with you, show _no_ compunctions about sharing a bed with him, give us absolutely _no_ information – what are we supposed to think?!"

"Well of _course_ I don't care about sharing a bed with him, the bed's plenty big enough, besides, I shared with Jer all the time before we built the additions," Anur shook his head, bringing his snickers under control at last.

"Then why didn't you write?" Jana asked quietly, "After your last visit – Anur. You said you'd write and you did for a month or two, and then nothing but a few sentences a year if we're _lucky_? We thought – we thought Kir explained it. Maybe you thought for some reason we would care about – about your partners. But if that's not it – why?"

"I… I don't know," Anur shrugged uncomfortably, "It wasn't any conscious decision I just – kept putting it off and then it just – never happened. I guess. I wasn't _trying_ to worry you all sick. I just don't like writing letters."

"Then Uncle Kir's going to have to!" Mara said firmly, Joseph and Marko both perking up from where they were playing on the rug, grinning, "Yeah! Uncle Kir!"

Kir just sat there with a slack jaw, Anur taking one look at his face and laughing again, before reaching over and shutting it with a finger, "Yeah, that's right Mara. Your Uncle Kir is going to have to write for me."

"Well, even if not _quite_ how I anticipated," Anna sent a scathing look at her sheepish son, "Your still part of the family now Kir. I don't think the children are going to let a Firestarting Uncle go."

"Can you do another cool trick? Songs are _boring_," Marko pouted, Lilah and Kay spluttering indignantly and all Kir could do was laugh and comply. What else was there? Somehow, impossibly, they wanted a Firestarter in their family.

That night – they didn't stay up near as late as the previous one – Kir was staring up at the ceiling in their room and knew by virtue of the fact Anur wasn't contorted into some bizarre position that the Herald was also awake. "Can't say I saw that one coming," Anur finally said quietly.

"No. That was decidedly odd. Thought now that they've said it, I can see it. Somewhat."

"Well, doesn't matter. You're like a brother to me, so result is the same. The kids have a new Uncle to pester for stories. Ha!"

"Ah, but _I_ don't have a magical talking horse with ridiculously fast gaits to get me here regularly. And I'm from an enemy nation, so they will be expecting far more from_ you_, my demon-riding friend. Especially now Mara actually knows who you are."

"…shut up."

***===***pagebreak***===***

"So I'm not getting fast enough for anything within a meter," Anur frowned a few days later, he and Kir enlisted in helping Mara build her own snow-fort while the twins worked a throw away. He'd been able to dodge most of this morning's snow, but enough had hit to drip down his neck and shiver until Kir took pity on him and dried out his undershirt and scarf with a quick touch.

Hence, his analysis.

"You were able to get your response time to ridiculous levels though," Anur observed, Kir patiently packing snow into squares and passing them to Mara to stack. "Like when that dummy exploded with Griffon – you managed to keep anything from hitting you! And all these snowballs and pinecones too! Is it just practice?"

"It's different," Kir sighed, Anur had gotten stuck on the similarities between Fetching and Firstarting and had jumped too far into it, apparently thinking of them as the same Gift.

"Fundamentally, yes, I am moving things, 'fetching' if you prefer," he elaborated, "But they're not stationary objects, even when I'm setting a stationary thing on fire. Even this snowball," he hefted one experimentally, "Isn't _stationary_. Certainly, it is solid, and as a whole it is unmoving, but what I move is still vibrating in place. It's slower, in general, in colder things, but it's still there. So I have always been training to 'fetch' moving objects at quick speeds, moving them within moments so that the flames I generate appear to be instantaneous."

"It is entirely possible that you won't ever really be able to consistently get fast enough to stop projectiles within a meter of you," Kir allowed, "I am not familiar with the limits of your witc- your Gift."

"But that's okay!" Mara inserted, "Snow-brick please!"

Anur handed her one, asking, "What do you mean Mara? That it's okay?"

"Kir can get the things close-by, and you can get the things far away, that's the problem, right? That you can't get snowballs from nearby?"

The two of them both watched the cheerfull redhead in silence for a few moments, before Anur chuckled, "Out of the mouths of babes. I suppose I couldn't rely on it, but it'd be worth practicing, you think?"

"What, team-blocking?" Kir shrugged, "I cannot see why not."

"Maybe later though," Anur shuddered, "I kind of like having a dry shirt."

"Please you just – do you hear…?"

The boys apparently heard the same and jumped to their feet, spotting the wagon coming in and bolting for it, cheering, "Uncle Marcus!"

"Right. This is your father's brother, correct?" Kir asked, eyeing the approaching wagon cautiously. So far, the warnings of more distant relatives dropping by had proved unfounded, but they had received word yesterday that Marcus Bellamy was going to be able to make it from his home one village eastward, staying the night here one night, and another with Jer and Ayla closer to the center of Lisle.

"Right, father's older brother, Marko's namesake," Anur confirmed, straightening to stand next to him and waving at the new arrival, Kay driving the cart into the stables and from the raised tone, scolding the boys for trying to dodge under the placid draft-horse's hooves to jump up and greet their Uncle Marcus.

Mara just sniffed from her position, standing with a mittened hand gripping Kir's pantleg as she watched them. "Boys," she said imperiously, Kir and Anur quickly stifling snickers at her tone, one they were both well-versed in having sisters of their own, even if Kir hadn't seen his in over a decade.

They watched as the cart, now loaded with the boys too, apparently jabbering away at their great-uncle, pulled up to the stables. Connor was in there, tending to some 'repairs' he'd insisted they stay _far away _from, and opened the doors for them.

"I certainly hope he managed to hide the children's gifts before they got to him," Kir murmured and Anur chuckled, the pair of them having very quickly realized the reason they were often being assigned 'child-herding' duty had a fair bit more to it than the sheer novelty factor keeping the three entertained longer, though it was certainly a contributor.

"Shall we go say hello, Mara?" he asked, louder, as he looked down at the girl. She looked up and nodded with a smile, before scampering ahead of them.

"She's hilariously attached to you," Anur pointed out, Kir just shrugging uncomfortably. He wasn't used to anyone being as welcoming to him as this whole family was, and for a child like Mara to be so adoringly attached to him was truy disconcerting. He honestly kept waiting for her to look at him with fear like she had the first day – even if her reasons were far different than the usual, the reaction was far more typical than her attachment.

She reached the stables quickly, and was dragged out of sight immediately by the twins, which instantly set them on alert. The three of them had taken their duty to help Anur learn to block moving objects very seriously, and at Jer's suggestion begun ambushing him whenever possible.

Anur had very quickly shoved snow down his shirt in retaliation.

"Is that my wayward nephew?" an unfamiliar voice called, the man owning the voice striding out of the stables with a laugh, hair, a darker brown than Anur and Connor's, streaked thickly with grey.

"Uncle Marcus!" Anur grinned, taking a few hasty steps forward to return the man's hug, "It's good to see you uncle."

"Good to see you too after all these years! Was worried about you lad, we all were," Marcus frowned, examing Anur critically, "Don't look much worse for the wear, war and all. That crazy horse of yours been treating you right? No hero dashes for you?"

"Well there were some close calls," Anur admitted with a grin, elbowing him, "And leave Aelius out of it! You know I'd be just as bad on my own!"

"Don't I know it, you got it from me!" Marcus laughed, before turning to Kir, holding out his hand, "You must be this friend I've heard absolutely nothing about."

Kir laughed in reply, returning the shake and saying wryly, "Kir Dinesh. And apparently it's worth saying this, but truly, it's simply _friend_. This worthless idiot fails at communicating in writing."

"He does, he does," Marcus sighed, shaking his hand in a firm grip before releasing him. "Get's _that_ from his father. At least he got his mother's chattiness, or we'd never hear a word from him!"

"Get em!" Joseph and Marko suddenly shouted, popping around the stable's corner and hurling snowballs, Mara joining them with a laugh. Marcus grinned and whirled around, holding a laughingly struggling Anur across the chest so he couldn't escape.

"Kir a little help here!" Anur called and Kir rolled his eyes, unable to stop the smile as he sent flames flaring out with a quick gesture, the snowballs vaporizing before they made contact and the kids cheering. They were more excited to see him block them with fire than they were to actually get Anur hit with snow at this point; it was more of a novelty.

Anur truly hadn't gotten the knack of close-quarter projectiles yet.

"A Firestarter, eh? I thought the kids were exaggerating," Marcus said thoughtfully, turning back around but keeping an arm draped across Anur's shoulders, despite the Herald being slightly taller than him. "So those Companions finally got around to picking someone to help out that Herald Griffon we're hearing about in songs? About time!"

"Don't be silly Uncle Marcus!" Mara shouted, colliding with Kir's legs and beaming up him, "Uncle Kir's not a _Herald_, he's a _priest_!"

Kir didn't need Anur's suddenly horrified expression to know that was exactly the wrong thing to say, and mentally cursed that he hadn't left the witch-horse Sun-in-Glory in their room for once.


	5. Chapter 5

"A priest?" Marcus had said quietly, Anur confirming it in a low voice and Kir took the chance to whisk Mara away from the confrontation, not wanting her to have to see it. He didn't particularly want to see it either, he had been enjoying the seemingly unconditional acceptance this family had offered him and watching it fall hurt even as he'd been braced for it.

He could still recognize the tone, even unable to make out words: Anur placating, trying to soothe, while Marcus' was full of an old, bitter and soured loathing that he recognized in those who had been truly scarred. Someone Marcus had cared about had been burned, had been killed by the priesthood and there was nothing Kir could do to make that right or assure him that he had personally never done such a wretched thing.

Blast, this whole thing had been too good to be true.

"Right! So, Marcus, like I said, Kir Dinesh, good friend who's _saved my life_," Anur hissed the last at his uncle rather viciously, before continuing cheerily, "Now the introductions are out of the way, why don't we go say hi to the rest of the clan? They're lurking inside I think – ready to ambush us I'm sure."

On one level, Kir really appreciated Anur's ability to cheerfully gloss over things and shove past awkward situations. On another, it was rather frustrating to know that this entire thing was simply going to fester and seethe under the surface the entire time Marcus was here. At least it was only a day or so, Kir thought tiredly, Mara cheerfully tugging him after her to finish building the snow-fort, he could handle a day or so.

By the time that evening rolled around he was very much doubting his ability to handle this for a day or so. It had been just past noon when Marcus had arrived and though Kir had tried to stay out of the man's way as much as possible, and when unable to avoid him, kept the three children around him as a form of defense (and wasn't _that_ twisted, the bitter part of him mused, children defending a child-killer), he couldn't avoid the pointed comments and questions as to his duties. Thankfully, as a chaplain, he had plenty of duties that had nothing to do with witchburnings and internal affairs matters, but Marcus was a master of word-play and knew damn well Kir wasn't innocent.

Was the blood staining his hands so obvious? Was his soul permanently stained, the blood-soaked ash he had grown used to blackening his hands and digging under his nails? Internally he screamed at it all, that the family he had so enjoyed being a part of was no longer happy and welcoming but with an underlying tension ruining their holiday even as they tried to laugh and enjoy their family's presence despite it. He shouldn't have said yes to this, he should have told Anur that he'd spend the night in the Waystation he should have done _something_ to keep this whole mess, fiasco, _disaster_ from happening.

Some gift he was giving.

Jer and Ayla left with the boys to their own home in Lisle proper, Jana taking the opportunity to send Mara off to bed. As soon as the children were gone Kir could feel the animosity skyrocket but he had _practice_ at this, he was _good_ at this if nothing else and simply ignored Marcus' now even more pointed biting questions and comments with bland casualness. As much as it hurt, he could acknowledge that he had heard far worse from his own brotherhood and it was only the unexpected and sudden nature of the entire confrontation that was making it so painful.

In fact, it was all he could do to keep Anur from exploding, kicking him under the table repeatedly to keep his mouth _shut_. He would not have Anur and his uncle get in a huge argument over him when Marcus was _right_ damn it all. Anur was just more forgiving.

Jana came downstairs from settling Mara and interrupted what had become a standoff with a pointed, "Kir. Help me tend to the horses."

He immediately stood and followed her to the slush room, the duo (because truly, it was Anur and Marcus that had really been glaring at each other) at least having the decency to wait until they were outside and walking towards the stables before erupting into shouts. Kir flinched at the sudden increase in volume, unable to make out the words again but definitely knowing exactly what the topic was, but he only commented, "I hope they don't wake Mara up."

"She sleeps like the dead," Jana assured him, "Which honestly made her comment about you that first morning all the more entertaining. And sound doesn't actually carry very well up the stairs – she probably can't hear much from the room we're sharing anyway."

Kir only sighed and nodded, the horses already tended to and the entire thing a blatant attempt to get him out of the area so they could have out their argument. "I do apologize," he said finally, the pair standing in the snow and watching the forest surrounding the house. "For causing this… unpleasantness."

Jana sighed, "Honestly, there was going to be unpleasantness one way or the other. Anur hasn't been home in four years and written a few sentences a year if that. It's been a… problem. For the family. Having you here has probably made the holiday much easier for all of us, actually. The children love it for one thing, and you gave us all someone to focus on besides Anur and his deplorable letter writing skills."

"Why wouldn't he come home in four years?" Kir demanded, waving his hand at the house behind them, raised voices still somewhat audible, "Arguments and all, if I could go home to – if this was what – I would go! I would go home! Write! Something! Not four years with no word!"

"It might be because you can't," Jana pointed out, "Anur knows he can come home, so it doesn't occur to him that one day he might come home and find out it's too late something horrible has happened or something wonderful has happened and he missed it. Taking it for granted, I suppose."

"Well if there is one thing you can count on its that I'll be making him write more than a few sentences," Kir informed her, "A Herald is – it is not a bad thing, to have a Herald in the family. There is no reason he should not communicate."

"Sunpriests aren't, then?" Jana asked after a few moments silence, "Allowed to contact their families, I mean."

"No. No we aren't," Kir replied shortly, arms crossed as he stared at the snow fiercely.

"When did you last see them?"

"I was seven."

He looked up, startled when Jana placed a hand on his arm, a sad look on her face, "I can't imagine how – I can't imagine. Being taken or having a child taken that young. At all, for that matter. As much as Marcus is yelling about the priests hurting us – they hurt you a lot more, don't they? The people of Karse? We at least have a reprieve but… children, taken like that."

He didn't know how to remind her that he was the one kidnapping children now, he was the one burning those young children she was so sad for. Did it make a difference, that he had been one of them once? How could it? How could it possibly matter that he was just the latest in a long line of the same? That didn't change that it was wrong, what he had done, it didn't change that it was murder. It just put it at a horrific societal scale. Condoned slaughter, condoned kidnapping – did authorization make it alright? Did having orders somehow keep him from having moral responsibility? How could it? How could it when he knew deep in his soul, deep in his bones, that what he had done was wrong?

Jana took his silence as acceptance, and the voices in the house had quieted, so she sighed again and patted his arm before turning back, "Come on, Kir. They should have that out of their system and we'll be able to at least enjoy some tea before going to bed."

"I wouldn't count on it," Kir muttered, but followed her nonetheless. It was rather cold, and tea (and sleep, away from Marcus where he could just hide) sounded wonderful.

They stepped into the slush-room and froze, the argument apparently still going on but no longer a screaming, roaring thing, instead made of lowered tones no less vicious and fierce for their lack of volume.

"And how can you justify this? This friendship of yours with some _bastard_ some Sunpriest _wretch_ who sets _innocent people on fire_ as his _calling_ as his _religion_? Hmm? How can you justify something like that?!" Marcus demanded, fury (and if Kir were honest, hurt confusion) clear in his voice.

"Because he _hasn't_!" Anur said fiercely.

Kir was never more grateful he hadn't stepped out of the slush-room, listening covertly. Jana had entered with him, but thankfully had been equally reluctant to enter the argument.

Sunlord that Anur could actually _believe_ such a thing. And believe it so deeply that it never even _occurred_ to him the utter impossibility of what he was claiming. Even if Kir had – even if he'd – there was no way. None at all, that he could have risen to a First Order Firestarter, failed prodigy or no, without killing innocents.

His country, his home, was in the grips of a quiet civil war. He had already _murdered_ for his newfound cause, for his certainty that what they were doing, allying with Valdemar, was _right_. Yet here his Herald was, his friend, claiming with such fervor that he had never killed innocents, not just murdered, but never even _killed_.

He couldn't stay here any longer.

Jana whispered something but he was already out the door again, coat flapping as he darted for the stables, knowing no one would be venturing to those now, not with the horses tended to already. How could he _believe_ that?

He collapsed to his knees in front of the central hearth, glowing embers radiating heat for the stables but soon to turn to dark coals. He didn't even notice the chill seeping into his bones from the bare floor, whispering desperate prayers to a God he could hardly imagine would consider his wretched words worth listening to.

***===***pagebreak***===***

_:Chosen. You need to get out here. Now,: _Aelius interrupted the angry silence that had fallen after Anur and Marcus' argument. Short enough a time had passed that Anur was able to shove away from the table and give a curt, "I'm going to see Aelius," with it easily attributed to the argument rather than an urgent summons.

He entere the slush-room to get his boots and coat on, surprised to find Jana struggling back into her own still snow-dusted coat. "Jana?" he asked lowly, guessing she didn't want their uncle to hear she was present just yet by her actions, "What is it?"

"Anur!" she cried softly, grabbing his shirt fiercely and staring up at him, "He heard it Anur, he heard _all_ of it I am so sorry I tried to stall but – "

"Where is he?" Anur interrupted.

"He ran for the stables, I think. Did Aelius – ?"

"Yes. Shit. Damn it. Don't expect us back, all right? There's plenty of wood for the night and I can't see him again, not now," Anur growled the last, jerking his head back towards the main body of the house in clear indication of just who he wanted to avoid.

"Right. I'll distract Uncle Marcus," Jana nodded, shucking her coat quickly and hanging it. Anur jammed his feet into his boots and stepped out before his coat was even fully on, wrapping it around himself for the brief walk to the stables, the freshly broken path only barely visible in the porch lamp-light.

He slipped through the door, latching it securely against the cold before turning to Kir, alarmed to hear his murmured prayers, interrupted by what he would swear were choked sobs. _Damn_ Marcus and his prejudice!

"Kir!" he cried, rushing over and crouching next to him, resting a hand on his friend's back and babbling in Karsite, "Gods, I am so _sorry_ Kir, that you had to hear that. Jana was trying to delay you so we could get that argument out of the way without you hearing. He doesn't _know_ you Kir, he doesn't know _anything_ he's just a – "

"Person who can see the truth!" Kir snarled, whipping around to glare at him, Anur scrambling back in shock and jumping to his feet as the embers flared into fresh life, twisting the shadows in Kir's expression into something truly horrifying as the other man rose to his own feet.

"How could you believe that Herald! Did you hear _nothing_ of what I said when I pulled you from the flames? I've _burned_ people, Herald. I've _hunted_ those innocent witches you so pity. What about a _Firestarter_ don't you understand? I didn't get chosen for that order on basis of my looks or tendency towards studies, I didn't get known as a prodigy in the _first_ place without some flame-scorched blood on my hands!"

"Kir those – you explained those, if you hadn't someone else _would_ have and it would have been a slower – "

"And what about Gero!"

"Ge – who?" Anur asked, completely bewildered and alarmed at his friend's utter grief-filled fury.

"Gero! The conscript – the _boy_ I murdered in front of the altar of my God!" Kir screamed at him, tears glistening orange in the now purely Gift-fueled flames. "I _murdered_ him, snapped his neck while he knelt at the altar because he reported evil in my squad!"

"A fanatic then?"

"No!" the flames roared out of the hearth with that declaration, Anur refusing to flinch back from them but it was a mighty struggle as he watched his friend's grief shift to complete _rage_ at his assumption.

"No! Not a _fanatic_, a _believer_! He believed what he had been raised as, believed in the Sunpriests, in the Sunlord Vkandis' shepherds! Damn you Herald, Karse isn't divided between fanatics and Valdemaran sympathizers! There are ordinary people, _good_ people, who know nothing more than the things they were raised to see as truths! Raised! For generations upon generations we've been _raised_ to see the White-Demons and the stain of Witach as synonomous! He was _scared!_ He came to me for _help!_ The first time, the _first time_ someone ever comes to _me_, a _Firestarter_, genuinely believing that I can _help _purge true _evil_ from their comrades and I _kill him_."

Something vanished in Kir with that declaration, the roaring flames crumbling into the hot ash that remained of its natural fuel, Kir himself seeming only barely able to hold himself upright.

The moment the flames subsided so his coat wouldn't catch on fire crossing in front of the hearth, Anur took the two necessary steps and pulled Kir into a fierce hug, the priest quietly sobbing into his shoulder, murmuring broken apologies and admissions of guilt all the while.

_:Aelius?: _Anur asked softly, resting his head on Kir's, _:…I – I don't think I can fix this.:_

_:It's not something that can be fixed, Chosen.:_

When Kir's sobs seemed to have subsided, guilt-stricken murmurs tapering off, Anur shifted and said lowly, "I'm sorry, Kir. For… well I have a lot to apologize for I suppose."

"How could you _believe_ that?" Kir whispered, and Anur winced, knowing that the answer wasn't something for him to be particularly proud of.

"I wanted to," he replied quietly, "I… when we first ran into one another, in Hardorn, I didn't have time to process what being a Sunpriest might mean, especially not with Ancar starting the war right afterwards. By the time I had a chance to think on it I was being sent down into Karse undercover and the whole Sunbream Brook fiasco happened and by then I – I didn't want to think that you'd ever done something like that. You saved me, that was all that mattered and thinking that – that there had been others, that you _hadn't_ saved, that you used to _be _one of those blank-faced acolytes lowering torches I – I just didn't want to believe it. So… I didn't. I guess I told myself that everyone you may have burned was justified, somehow, either by giving them a painless death or – or something. I don't know. I… I didn't think. I guess. I didn't want to."

"It's not true. I never – _never_ – lied about my Order, about what my duty was it – it was one of the few things I could hold to. That at least I would never hide the ash on my hands, pretend I was some innocent pastoral red-robe sent out on an unpleasant duty," Kir shuddered, Anur wincing as he recalled his own confusion at Kir's refusal to set aside the title of Firestarter if Karse should change it's political tune.

They stood in silence for a while, before Anur sighed, realizing a lot of this could have been avoided if he had asked this at the beginning. It was sometimes hard to remember – probably _purposefully_ hard to remember, if he were being honest with himself – that they truly came from what could be considered entirely different worlds.

"Come on, let's sit down," he said, pulling back and calling an unused horse-blanket over, setting it on the ground to provide some insulation before dragging Kir down to sit next to him in front of the hearth. Putting some wood into the embers, he prodded them into low flames himself, figuring asking Kir to firestart right now would be a little tactless.

Settling next to him, making sure to sit so their shoulders were pressed against each other for support, he asked, "So what does it mean, to be a Firestarter?"

"…why ask now?"

"Because I asked Herald Alberich months ago, right after we met, and he said that it was a small, vicious Order isolated from everyone because of your duties, and that it was an honest miracle I had managed to meet you out of all of them," Anur said bluntly, "And I built up my own theories from there, and got a lot wrong. So – I'm asking you. Now."

"A small, vicious Order," Kir repeated softly, before chuckling bitterly, "That is a good description, actually. Small. Vicious. It works."

"You're _not_," Anur said fiercely, elbowing him, "You're _not_ vicious, Kir. You're not."

"You thought I'd never killed anyone, Herald."

"No, I – okay. I _knew_ you had burned Gifted. I knew that. And I told Marcus you hadn't burned innocents because when he said 'burned innocents', I didn't hear that. I heard how many children did you burn because you _could_. Because they were _there_ and were _convenient_. _That_. That is vicious. Burning kids, just because you have the power too, because your government justifies it. That's vicious. You're _not_. You – you burned the ones you did because it was _obvious_ – I'm guessing. It was blatant that there was something 'witchy' about them, and if you didn't, someone would. That's what you said, remember? If you didn't someone else would and it wouldn't be fast. It'd be slow, it'd be tarred wood alone, and it'd be agony. And no one would pray for them – well, not the burner, anyway. You would. You do!"

"And Gero?" Kir asked, a dark edge to his question Anur would be a true idiot to not notice.

Anur did notice it, and hesitated in his automatic refutation of Kir's viciousness in that matter. He still didn't think it qualified as vicious, but his assumptions about what had happened had already caused one veritable explosion, so he should probably avoid any more.

"I – I don't know," Anur admitted, "I can't say. I don't know enough about what happened."

"It is not complicated," Kir said flatly, staring at the fire, arms crossed, "He – he came to me after the evening service, and declared he had found wickedness in the unit. He had… heard plots against the Son of Sun, had heard insults and blasphemy offered against the Son of Sun. He'd heard verbal support offered to the White Demons of the north, bitterness against the priesthood and loathing for the Furies. And Sunlord, what could I do? Every word of it was true, I could probably have named exactly who he'd heard each of those things from, if he hadn't simply heard it from everyone. They were all too used to me not caring or even agreeing with them to watch their tongues like most Karsites do."

"So you killed him."

"What else _was_ there?" Kir whispered, hunching in on himself. "What else could I have _done?_"

Anur was blank. He had no idea. It wasn't a scenario that would really come up as a Herald – to kill someone who'd come to you to confess to overhearing treason you were complicit in. It'd imply a treasonous Herald, and the way Valdemar was structured that was a bit of a contradiction.

_:Not quite, Chosen.:_

_:Aelius?:_

_:As a Herald of Valdemar, for Valdemar, you are right. It would not come up. But to betray someone's faith in you, because of your faith in a greater cause or truth – that. That can come up as a Herald.:_

_:…I don't understand.:_

A tired sigh echoed in his mind, and Anur was terrified. Aelius had never sounded that _tired_ before, not emotionally exhausted like that. He hated this, hated this whole thing. Kir was hurting, Aelius was suddenly exhausted and damn it all it was _his_ fault for not thinking things through. _Again_.

_:Can you relay this? To the Sunpriest?:_

_:Of course.:_

_:Good. Tell him this - :_

"Aelius says that – that the situation isn't one that would come up much as a Herald. Not as my type of Herald – my type? What does that – fine, fine. To betray personal ideals and morals for a cause greater than oneself, no matter how just or right a cause, is something that never goes away. The guilt at any such betrayal is lingering, to have killed, to have murdered, someone who trusted you? It never truly leaves, in my – ah, his – experience. Everyone has their own method of coping with guilt, of penance, and he does not know what would be best for you. All he can say is that letting it fester in silence makes it worse."

"And on my note, don't do something reckless and potentially life-threatening as some form of penance," Anur hastily added, easily seeing how avoiding 'festering in silence' could end in self-immolation if the guilty grief became too much.

"…That, was a very enlightening conversation," Kir murmured, and Anur agreed, but right now was not the time to think about what sort of Companion secrets Aelius implied or revealed with that statement, because he needed to make sure Kir was going to be all right, at least eventually.

And questioning Karse hadn't worked, because damn it all, Kir was _right_. He was _right_, to say that what he had done was wrong. But so much of that was situational – so much of that was because of the _sanctioned evil_ his countrymen and he had been _raised_ to think was right and just. When Anur considered that, it seemed a miracle that a detectable number of people ended up questioning the Sunpriests claims on witchcraft and Heralds.

Hell, the people in Hardorn blamed _Valdemar_ for the war right now! The majority of them were only just catching on to the fact that _Ancar_ was in the wrong, that he was doing something _wrong_ to their land and their people, if at all! And that was after years of alliance! To go against centuries of hatred and loathing, spread across an entire society and institutions of it? It would be _hard_. It would be _terrifying._

"You're the bravest person I know," Anur blurted, and restrained the urge to slap himself. Seriously, _that_ was what he opened with?

Kir seemed to shake off some of his black mood to stare at him in bemusement, "What?"

Anur mentally sighed, he'd have to run with it.

"Like you said, Karsites, you're _raised_ believing in the evil of the White Demons, in the evil of the Gifted, that they're stained by Witach. Generation upon generation passes those beliefs down and it's _hard_ to think past that. To admit that _everyone you know_ is _wrong_. And not just wrong, but commiting _moral crimes_, or at least being complicit to those crimes.

"And you didn't – it wasn't some epiphany for you, I don't think. I mean – I'm just guessing for you, but the other pro-Valdemaran Karsites I've met? Which number… few. But some through you as well? Alberich, Asher – that Captain of yours, even the Sergeant? They had some crisis, some pivotal moment. Alberich was found to have a witch-power, and he was condemned even though he only ever tried to serve Karse. He also had Kantor and a Companion – you can't betray that, Kir. Even if it took him a while to really believe it, you can't _doubt_, truly, that Companions are forces for good. It – I can't explain. It's impossible, with words, if you don't just – if you don't have one, I guess.

"Moving on. Asher – same thing. He was found with a Gift, and tried to turn to his priests, and burned for it. And, yes, I suspect his Gift is at least partially Foresight and he may have had some inkling that you were coming, but it was scary, it was someone trying _to murder him_ and that is a definite crisis point.

"That Captain? Your unit, his men, were starving and Sunhame was the direct cause! The Sergeant? Apparently knew Alberich – and that was really bizarre to hear, let me say – and was loyal to him, and thought it was wrong that he was burned. Crisis points, again.

"You – the position you hold, in the priesthood, it's one of power. Of prestige. There is no _reason_, beyond your _own personal morals_ and your own _guts_ for you to have considered going against Sunhame's system. There was no defining _crisis_ for you. Okay, you didn't like the screams so you burned witches faster than everyone else. That doesn't mean you had to start doubting that witches were really _witches_, were really _evil_. It doesn't mean you had to really _think_ about why you were burning them, about whether or not they were really evil. You just had to consider that even witches deserved some mercy.

"So yeah, I think you're brave. All the people I know, who've changed a belief system like that – that's _brave_. That's _courage_. But situations _forced them to face it_, events _made_ them question what was going on. You – I don't think you had that. It wasn't a _requirement_ for your survival to question what was really evil about witches and Heralds. I mean, really, it would probably have been better for your odds on surviving if you _hadn't_ questioned it, had taken that firestarting prodigy label and _ran_ with it.

"So, I ever get asked, what was the bravest thing I ever saw someone do? It would be you, telling me it was too cold to fight, and trusting that a person you'd always thought of as a _demon_, as an _incarnation of evil_ would hold to a truce."

Kir was staring at him now, and Aelius' silence echoed in his own mind, while Anur sat there, just waiting for someone to say _something_, because he had definitely said enough.

"I – I'm not – it – well blast, Herald, I don't know what to say to that," Kir managed, a rueful smile appearing on his face.

Anur echoed it, weight lifting off his shoulders as he realized that _something_ he or Aelius had said had managed to at least get Kir thinking beyond what he'd had to do. He didn't know how to help Kir get past the guilt he would guess he'd carry all his life, but reminding him of all the good he had done, of how much he had to _risk_ to get to this point? That had to help a bit.

It probably also helped that he'd never met this Gero, or anyone from Kir's circle besides Kir and the complicit group of 62nd members from the supply train this summer, but damn it. He'd rather have this Gero dead and Kir alive and kicking than the other way around any day, innocent or not, as un-Heraldic as that was.

"Well, don't tell me there was some defining crisis point, because then my theory falls to pieces," Anur replied dryly, startling an actual chuckle out of Kir and nearly grinning because of it.

"There… wasn't. There was the moment I realized I hated the screams – it drove me to consent to train as a Firestarter. But the realization that the people I was training to burn weren't actually witches in the old sense of the word, in the true sense of the word – that took time. I think," Kir chuckled wryly, "I think it was actually the story of Ari and the Witach that did it. We were told that story _all _the _time_ as Firestarter candidates. And I just kept comparing the God-King's power, his utter _wretchedness_ and actual _evil_ to the witch-stained of today and it just didn't match. And somehow, by the time I became a true acolyte, I doubted there were any truly evil witches on the pyres at all. By the time I was ordained I was certain."

"Ha! Idolization confirmed!" Anur cheered, Kir snorting and shaking his head.

"Can't say I ever thought I'd be _admired_ for my heresy."

They sat in silence for another long while, but it was an easy one, not strained with misunderstandings piled on top of one another.

"We don't have to go back inside, do we?" Kir asked finally, and Anur shook his head violently at the idea. "Oh no, I told Jana not to expect us back. We have horse-blankets, plenty of wood, and our coats. If we really get cold, Aelius can get over here and serve as a heat-source. We are _definitely_ not going back in there, technically correct or not."

Kir shook his head, flopping back so he was stretched out on the ground, one arm twisted to pillow his head, the other hand resting on his stomach, "Virtuous pillar of justice, unwilling to fess up to being wrong? I am shocked. Truly shocked."

"I'm not," Anur said abruptly, wincing and actually burying his face in his hands this time. Really? They had just gotten the mood lightened and he was going to bring it down?

The silence stretched, no longer easy, and Kir finally reached up and tugged Anur down so he was stretched out on the blanket too, the two of them staring up at the stable ceiling. "Not what?" he finally asked, "A virtuous pillar of justice?"

"Yeah," Anur said quietly, unwilling to break the more light-hearted mood they'd reached but unwilling to refuse Kir answers after his own confessions. "I – I've made just as many mistakes, nowhere near as many reasons," he said the last bitterly, "I was just – a trusting idiot. I guess."

_:Oh, Chosen…:_

"I make friends easily right? I mean, there're jokes about it, amongst my yearmates. There were, anyway. They would say I could make friends with a _rock_. And I just about did – not a rock, that'd be weird, but I had people I called friends all over the palace, Haven – everywhere I went I tried to get a friend out of it."

"That's not a bad thing," Kir said softly.

"It is when you're blind to a friend's faults," Anur said darkly, "If she even _was_ a friend, the bitch. A lot of the _nobility_– it's a matter of pride, to have a Herald friend. So we learn pretty quickly that a lot of the time we're friends with them only as much as they want that status, and I _knew_ that, but she seemed different. It wasn't anything romantic, she told me that straight out, which was really unusual and honest and – so we were friends. When I had a chance, I'd search her out and we'd wander around the palace, chat, hang out with each other's groups – her group didn't like me much. I wasn't a politically powerful Herald, with no ambitions for higher office, so they didn't see the point. So she hung out with _my_ group."

"And – okay. There was this pair of friends, Dirk and Kris, in my year. We hung out pretty often, being at similar levels in classes and everything. Kris – he was like the definition of attractive. Dirk is – well. He's not. And him being with Kris all the time just sort of emphasized that 'not'. So he was used to being passed over by girls, by everyone, because Kris was just better looking. None of us really _liked_ it, but what could you do?"

"But Delilah, she – she clearly found Kris _attractive_. Who wouldn't? But she went out of her way to talk to Dirk, to firt with _Dirk_. And Dirk wasn't an idiot, we'd seen that sort of thing before, but she kept it up, she sought him out alone and – I mean, we're talking nearly seven _moons_ here – they're seeing each other and really seem serious about it."

"Ah frost it," Kir muttered, clearly seeing this was not going to end well given the set up of the whole story.

"Then one evening he's going to meet with her and overhears her talking at Kris, _laughing_ about how Dirk actually thought she'd be interested in _him_ when _Kris_ was there. She just wanted Kris to acknowledge her and she knew the best way to do _that_ was to get in with Dirk."

"Dirk he – something broke. With that. And he – he nearly killed himself. He tried, he actually _tried_ and he _had _Ahrodie in his mind screaming about it. To do that – to be that _broken_, gods Kir it was _awful_."

"And she _thanked _me. She wrote me a _thankful letter_ for getting her in and giving her that chance, even if it hadn't worked out. She didn't even think what she'd done was _wrong!_ Worse, Kris found me reading it and completely _freaked out_ at me, justified, but – he really thought I'd go along with something like that. That I'd betray a _brother_ like that."

"He apologized, later, he was just furious and hurt and lashed out, but it hurt, that he'd think that. And a lot of my group didn't – didn't really trust my friends after that, trust my judgement after that. So… when the chance came up to choose my assignment, I asked for border-Herald, because it meant I'd be the only one and not too many Heralds, even on circuit, would come by."

"So. Not a virtuous pillar of justice. Sorry to drop that on you like that."

The silence fell again, and Anur would admit this time that he was nervous, waiting for Kir's reaction. He doubted it would be anything extreme, his guilt would be _nothing_ compared to Kir's, but he was still worried about his friend's reaction.

He wasn't expecting a chuckle.

"Kir?"

"Quite the pair, we are," Kir said, "Isolated even from those we should call brother, willfully or not. If I meet this Kris, I shall break his nose."

"Ah… he's dead. Ancar – um. He was killed, by Ancar, when he was an envoy during the coup."

"Then I shall wait until my own death, and before Vkandis judges my soul, I will ask to speak with this Herald, and break his nose then, so that sin too can be weighed. How would that night in Hardorn have ended, Herald, if _either_ of us were even _slightly _less willing to take the chance on the other being less evil than we thought? You say it was I who was brave, but I was not the one whose brothers and sisters had been murdered by those of my order for centuries.

"You speak of your willingness to make friends, to trust, as if it is a great sin, something to be ashamed of. It is not. It sounds like that girl – Delilah? – she did everything to get you to trust her. Seven moons with this Dirk, and probably equally long building your friendship? She would make a fantastic spy with that sort of dedication redirected," Kir muttered the last, Anur snorting at the idea and Kir continued, "If you hadn't been willing to extend that truce, I would not have offered it myself. I would have lit some straw on fire, thrown it at you, and bolted, if I didn't actually set you alight in full. I was not the only brave one there, Herald. Do not think that your willingness to extend that truce, to extend that _friendship_, even for one night, was insignificant in any way."

"So are we both agreeing to stop wallowing, then?" Anur asked after a few moments, continuing hastily, "Not that I don't want you to talk to me, if you feel overwhelmed or guilty or anything, please do, but… um… it won't be the focal point of our days?"

Kir chuckled wearily, "I will try, Herald."

"Okay. Good. I'm glad."

Silence fell again, comfortable again, and Anur started to drift into sleep before a thought suddenly occurred to him.

"Kir?"

His friend sighed, "Yes, Herald?"

"I'm not apologizing to Marcus."

Kir laughed softly, saying, "He can believe what he likes, I don't care. He's not my shield-brother."

If Anur weren't so close to sleeping, he'd make a bigger deal about that admission, he really would. But he wouldn't forget it, so it could wait until tomorrow morning. But he could at least acknowledge it.

"Good night, brother."

"Good night."


	6. Chapter 6

"We need to stop doing this."

"What?" Kir asked, squinting in the bright dawn light as they trudged back from the stables, leaving fed horses in their wake.

"Sleeping in stables in the middle of winter," Anur grumbled, shivering and hunching into his coat. "It's _cold_, and my back is _killing_ me."

"Maybe if you didn't sleep like a contortionist you wouldn't be in so much pain," Kir replied blandly, "I feel perfectly fine, since we're not hungover this time."

Anur just gave him a dirty look, Kir chuckling at his expression and taking pity on the Herald. He pulled his hand out of his pocket and clasped a snow-dusted shoulder, carefully sending warmth into the man's coat and undershirt – it was a careful balance to detectably warm him without actually warming his _body_, which usually ended in serious illness, fevers and some mild cases of burning alive from the inside out.

Anur leaned into the contact with a happy sigh, "Thanks Kir. Quite possibly the best use of a Firestarting Gift _ever_."

"Yes, because defending your country from invasion is worth nothing compared to warm coats in wintertime."

"I have my priorities, you have yours."

"Good morning you two!" Jana called from the kitchen, cracking a window open. They both waved before heading through the slush-room and then trooping into the house itself, Jana and Anna both awake and in the kitchen. A quick glance towards the central room and hearth showed that Connor and Kay were also awake and stacking wood for easier access.

"Marcus not awake yet then?" Anur asked lowly, Jana nodding and Anna sighing, looking at Kir regretfully and saying, "I do apologize for him. I honestly forgot that it would be a problem – of course Mara's introduction wasn't the best-timed of things."

Kir shrugged uncomfortably. While Anur apparently felt no need to apologize, Kir still felt guilty about the inherent deception in his silence on the matter. He doubted _all_ of them considered Marcus' allegations entirely false, but without explicitly admitting to his own deeds it could be implied that all of them were justified. And remaining so welcoming of a murderer would be hard to do, and easy to shy from.

"I _think_ we managed to get him to the point of ignore-and-forget," Jana bit her lip, handing Anur a loaf of sweet-bread and a knife. "He's staying all day of course, dinner and the gifts, then he's going with Ayla and Jer back into Lisle proper, as planned."

"I can simply avoid him," Kir shrugged, "I will help with preparing the meal, then the children can get a chance to see their Uncle without the tension that was swamping everything yesterday."

"Kir, you are a marvel," Jana said gratefully, "That should work perfectly. Anur – behave."

"I can do ignore-and-forget too!" he insisted, Anna just laughing and pumping water into a kettle to heat for tea. Jana shook her head and gave him a joking warning gesture before turning back to the porridge she was working on.

Kir just watched them banter, slowly relaxing and letting himself believe that this entire issue really would be brushed aside so easily. They only had to last the rest of the day, with an entire family here to pressure them into ignoring and forgetting the entire issue. Mutual refusal to acknowledge – if only all of his problems could be resolved so easily.

Incredibly, it actually worked. The day passed with only a few tense silences, the children taking to their unassigned distraction duty with their usual gusto and dragging Marcus and Anur into enough random escapades that the two actually started joking around again. Kir was pulled away from Ayla and Jana's teasing interrogation over rising dough by Jer and Connor to smuggle gifts from the barn loft to the house while the children were out in the trees doing something that involved pine-cones and tackles.

This expedition led to a quiet question for Anna, who reassured him that it was probably a good idea to _not_ give Marcus anything, even if he did have extra pieces of appropriate knot-work. He also might have given a somewhat sideways warning that Anur had only been able to find presents for the children, and that they were a little last minute at that. He made sure to explain that his own gifts were simply extras he'd had lying around to avoid any implication of laziness or dereliction of gifting duties.

Anna just gave him an exasperated look and informed him that Anur being here and alive was Midwinter gift enough for all of them, even the children, though they'd undoubtedly be delighted at more gifts than they expected.

With that particular good deed out of the way, he was more than content to watch as children (and no few adults) clustered around the gifts that gradually appeared over the course of the afternoon, poking at the ones with their names and shaking some enthusiastically. The more enthusiastic gift testers were scolded and they sheepishly went about doing the exact same thing once the scolder left.

He loved it with a fierce ache. It had been so very long since he'd seen a family midwinter celebration, much less been part of one. Mara's enthusiastic guesses and speculations on her gifts (growing increasingly wild each time) were overlayed with a cheerful cousin he had been playmates with. The twins' laughably obvious attempts to sneak away with a gift or two early recalled equally poorly executed efforts on his and his older brother's part, though at the time they were convinced of their brilliance.

He hadn't thought of them in… Sunlord, not since he was an acolyte, at the least! Probably not since his initiate years, it simply wasn't worth losing sleep over.

Smiling faintly, he took his seat next to Anur for dinner, chatter and laughter washing over him as if the previous evening had never happened and said a silent prayer, _Sunlord, most gracious and merciful, may my own family's Midwinter be nothing but joy and companionship._

He was brought out of his musings and almost maudlin thoughts by the boys eagerly demanding the story of Anur's rescue (he smelled meddling) and he was required to keep Anur from making the entire matter far more dramatic than it really was. Besides, what was the point in missing people he'd never see again when he had a family here welcoming him to their home?

***===***pagebreak***===***

"So, successful Midwinter?" Anur asked, the two of them sitting on a couch, legs stretched out in front of the fire. Marcus had recently left with Ayla, Jer and the boys, Kir and he managing to exchange courteous nods in leiu of an actual farewell.

Kir chuckled and said honestly, "My best, I think."

"Good," Anur smiled over at him, "Because you'll be coming with next time I get a chance to visit. Mara would never forgive me if I came without you."

"And I'll probably be writing the majority of your letters since you're so horrible at it," Kir replied dryly, "I trust you'll at least manage to send them off if I hand them to you?"

"I think I can manage that," Anur laughed, brown and rusted red knotwork hackamore and reins draped over his knee. Kir had a feeling the Herald would be crossing the border soon and frequently, so anything to keep him from being instantly marked a demon-rider would be helpful. Also, it served as a gift for Aelius as well – witch-horses were surprisingly difficult to figure out gifts for.

He had a few more items for that disguise in mind, but it would take a while to assemble them all and they were most definitely needed, meaning they didn't really qualify as a gift in his mind. The hackamore could have been done without.

"So, we're leaving tomorrow. Are you going to be all right going back to Karse? Because if you can't – we'll find a place for you here. Captain Naomi would not be averse."

"Never," Kir replied immediately, only his knowledge that Anur asked out of sincere concern for him keeping him from being insulted. "I will not abandon my people."

Anur bumped shoulders with him, muttering, "Sorry, just worried. You've been in this for years Kir, and I just don't want you hurting yourself staying in an untenable situation. The offer's always open."

"It may not always be needed, but I thank you," Kir said, the obscure hint all he could bring himself to imply of Solaris' rise. He would have to tell Anur at some point, he knew that. But he would have to control the situation and being in his friend's childhood home was not a good place for that.

It also simply wasn't a good time for it. That particular conversation would require a lot of background information, explanations, and possibly some shouting. Not something to bring up at the conclusion of a surprisingly successful early Midwinter celebration.

Any further conversation was waylaid by everyone coming in from waving farewell to the departing group, Mara immediately scampering over and climbing up to sit between the two of them, leaning against Kir's side. He let an arm wrap around her, still wondering as to why exactly she had latched onto him so strongly but unwilling to deeply question it.

Anur just grinned at him as the remaining adults took seats around the fire as well, casual conversations starting up but for the most part they remained in peaceful silence. Kir was content to simply absorb as much of this welcoming warmth as he could, knowing it would likely be a long while before he'd be in such an environment again.

The next morning found the two of them packed and ready to go well before the Bellamy's were ready to let them leave. A crying Mara had to be peeled off of Kir's neck, the finely-knitted fire-toned scarf Anna had gifted him with damp with her tears, while the twins (who had arrived with Jer to bid farewell) were making a determined effort at remaining attached to Anur's legs. Anna and Jana both were scolding through their own tears, demanding frequent and lengthy updates from the both of them while Connor and Jer managed gruff farewells through suspiciously shiny eyes.

At least he had gotten better at accepting hugs. If he hadn't the entire farewell experience would have been much more awkward.

They finally managed to make their escapes after copious promises regarding everything from sending letters to staying safe to not forgetting to wash their socks. When they were out of sight and earshot, Anur sighed in exaggerated relief, "I seriously thought we would never escape."

"That was much more difficult than getting you out of Sunbeam Brook," Kir agreed, urging Riva into a trot. He was rather paranoid that one of them would come running after them with some new ridiculous promise to extract and Anur apparently agreed, Aelius immediately passing him at a lope, Anur hollering back a challenge.

Kir was loathe to agree, knowing that the witch-horse had an immense advantage, but Riva's pricked ears and hopeful picking up of his pace without breaking gait were too much. "Asch, fine, ridiculous horse," he muttered in Karsite, allowing the gelding to launch into his own lope. At least they'd get to the Waystation before dark even with a late departure.

***===***pagebreak***===***

"So, two weeks from now?" Anur asked a couple days later, raising an eyebrow at Kir. "Or should we wait for a thaw?"

"It'd probably be best to wait for midwinter's moon to be over, that's what, around three weeks? Gives me time to ensure I didn't miss some vital shift in the unit over these past two," Kir suggested, flame-toned scarf wrapped snuggly around his neck as it had been since he'd gotten it. "Then we'll probably have to work out a new schedule – not as frequent, not until the thaw. Unless you're the one riding overnight, but that is a bad plan. Furies are still lurking."

"Blasted things."

"Indeed. Well, enjoy your Midwinter, Anur. Thank you, for… this whole trip, I suppose."

"Enjoy your vigil, Kir. And thank you, for coming. I'm glad it worked out," Anur grinned, leaning over in his saddle to give Kir a one-armed embrace, the Sunpriest returning it with a laugh, the pair settling back in their saddles and giving a last nod before splitting paths. And if they both looked over their shoulders occasionally to watch the other leave, well – who was there to notice?

* * *

**A/N: **This chapter is... not my best. Gah. If I come up with something better, I'll fix it, but I have half the next one and just couldn't come up with anything else on it, SoR just needed to _end_! Anyway, hope you still enjoyed the fic :)


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